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FARMING 



WITH 



GREEN MANURES 



BY 

C. HARLAN, M. D. 



SEVENTH EDITION 
REVISED AND ENLARGED BY AN AGRONOMIST OF THE 
AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF THE U. S. GOVERNMENT 



Published by 
DELORE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 
1912 



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x<^ 



Copyrighted by 

F. R. CRUMLISH 

1912 



©CI.A309H»8 

NO. I 



PREFACE 

TO FIRST EDITION 



In publishing these pages I have two objects in view — the 
assistance of those who need advice and the instruction of my 
foreman on " My Farm," that he may understand the 
reason why he is required to do certain things. But how should 
I know any better than he does the laws of vegetable life and 
the best course to pursue to obtain remunerative crops ? 

He is supposed to be practically acquainted with the whole 
art of agriculture. Now, the fact must be plain to every one that 
no man, in his short life, by his own experience and observa- 
tion, can be come master of this art, because it takes a whole 
year to try one experiment. From this fact, his progress in 
knowledge must be very slow indeed. 

Well, then, besides the actual trials on the farm to improve 
his mind, the next best thing to do is to study carefully the re- 
corded experience of other farmers and the writings of the able 
investigators of the chemistry of plant-life. To do this with 
profit he should be acquainted, to a certain degree, with every 
science which has shed any light upon the subject. 

Now, the working farmer is generally too much engaged to 
acquire this knowledge. Well, then, if he will please to lay aside 
all prejudice against me, we will read for him and report a few 
of the grand truths which we find scattered through the vast 
tomes of other times and the periodicals of our own rushing, 
busy century. 

Whether I shall ever receive any thanks for this is a very 
small matter. 

The consciousness of having done good to others will amply 
repay me for all my trouble. 



4 PREFACE 

I sincerely believe that he who tills the soil is helping God to 
feed the world, for without tillage the earth could not support 
one-tenth of its present population. Therefore, what I can 
do in this good and noble cause it is my duty to do. And I may 
as well confess that to me it is no tiresome labor, because I love 
the art; and ever have loved it from my boyhood to the present 
hour. 

C. Harlan, M. D. 



PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION 



The cordial reception given to the former editions of this 
book appear to call for a new edition. The editors have taken 
advantage of this occasion to have the book completely revised 
in light of the important scientific discoveries made since the 
earlier editions were issued. Although more than three decades 
have passed since the first edition of this book was published yet 
there is so much of permanent value to the original themes of 
the book that the subsequent findings of both science and ex- 
perience have only added greater weight to their importance. 
The remarkable role which leguminous crops have come to play 
in assisting in the solution of the great problems of maintaining 
soil fertility has called for the addition of several of these legu- 
minous crops to the list of those treated within the pages of the 
former editions. A few crops important at the time the early 
editions were issued have given way the others found to be more 
valuable and the discussion of these has been eliminated to 
make room for a more adaquate treatment of the more important 
crops for green manuring purposes. There have been some 
modifications in the accepted composition of the different crops 
as well as in the market values of the various fertilizer constit- 
uents. It has therefore been deemed wise to make such changes 
in these figures as to make them applicable to present day con- 
ditions. The illustrations in this book have been secured from 
various publications of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

The importance of maintaining an abundant supply of hu- 
mus in the soil is coming to be recognized more and more as be- 
ing of prime importance to the up-to-date farmer who would 
restore and maintain the original fertility of his fields. The 
principal theme of Doctor Harlan in these pages has been to 



6 PREFACE TO SEVENTH EDITION 

point out how this maintenance of fertility can be brought about 
on the ordinary farm with the least possible outlay of labor and 
money. The general principles as laid down in the early 
editions have stood the test of time and experience and it is hoped 
that this edition will appeal with added force to the farmers of 
the country who have the permanent interests of their fa^s 
at heart. 



CONTENTS 



PA6B 

CHAPTER I 
Introduction 11 

CHAPTER n 
Covering the Soil 16 

CHAPTER III 
Surface Manuring 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

Water as a Solvent 22 

CHAPTER V 

Tillage as a Manure 26 

CHAPTER VI 

Green Manures 29 

CHAPTER VII 

Legumes Crops as Green Manures 32 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGB 

CHAPTER VIII 

Red Clover as a Green Manure 35 

CHAPTER IX 

Alfalfa as a Green Manure 41 

CHAPTER X 

Miscellaneous Legumes as Green Manures 46 

CHAPTER XI 

Green Corn as a Green Manure and as a Protection 
AND Mulch for Wheat 59 

CHAPTER XII 
Hungarian Millet 65 

CHAPTER XIII 

More About Green Clover 68 

CHAPTER XIV 
Green Rye 76 

CHAPTER XV 

Green Buckwheat 79 



Barnyard Manure. 



CONTENTS 9 

PAGB 

CHAPTER XVI 



CHAPTER XVII 



Ground Unburned Limestone vs. Burned Lime for 
Green Manures 85 

CHAPTER XVIII 

Forage for the Horses on the Farm 89 

CHAPTER XIX 

Loss of Liquid Manure 94 

CHAPTER XX 

John Johnston and Others on Raising Wheat 97 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Restoration of Poor Land by Green Manures. . , . 101 

CHAPTER XXII 

How TO Improve Large Farms With Green Manures. . 108 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Green Manures for Wheat 115 



10 CONTENTS 

PAGB 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Green Manures for Indian Corn 126 

CHAPTER XXV 

Green Manures for Potatoes 136 

CHAPTER XXVI 

Green Manures for the Market-Garden 146 

CHAPTER XXVII 

Green Manures for the Orchard 150 

CHAPTER XXVIII 
On Dividing the Farm into Fields 152 



FARMING WITH GREEN 
MANURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

THE plowing under of green crops for the purpose of main- 
taining the fertility of the soil is almost as old as history 
itself. The ancient nations compelled to live for centuries upon 
the same land, realized the importance of green manure crops 
often to fuller degree than do we the inhabitants of our relatively 
new country. Here the problem of maintaining soil fertility is only 
beginning to be so serious as to call for the development of the 
best farm practices with reference to the use of these green man- 
ure crops. The subject must ever be a complex one calling 
for the proper adaptation and combination of green manures 
with commercial fertilizers and with crops that are to be fed upon 
the soil and the resulting manure spread back upon the fields. 
Different farms will require different systems of management. 
It is the province of the succeeding chapters to point out the 
special value of turning under green crops for the purpose of 
soil improvement. 

Green manures may benefit the ground upon which they 
are grown in a number of different ways: (1) by adding vege- 
table matter or humus to the soil; (2) by utilizing and holding 
for succeeding crops much soluble plant food which would other- 
wise escape from the soil ; (3) plant food from the lower layers of 
the soil may be brought nearer the surface where it can be 
utilized to better advantage; (4) if the green manure crop be a 
legume there will be a considerable amount of nitrogen added 
to the soil through the fixation of nitrogen from the air. 



12 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

There are two classes of green manures; namely, those that 
merely add humus to the soil together with what plant food 
materials they may have withdrawn from the soil itself, and 
those that in addition to the humus they return to the soil, are 
able to draw nitrogen from the air and thus directly increase the 
amount of this most valuable element in the soil. This last 
class is the family of plants known as the legumes. All the deep 
rooting green manure crops, both legumes and non-legumes 
are usually able to draw up out of the deeper layers of the sub- 
soil, plant food which the succeeding shallower rooted crops 
would otherwise be unable to obtain. Such plants also permit 
the more feeble rooted plants to send their roots deeper into 
the soil since the deep feeding roots serve to break up the sub- 
soil and aerate it properly for the best growth of the roots of the 
following crop. 

The necessity of making some return to the soil to compen- 
sate it for the large removals from it in the form of crops is com- 
ing to be recognized even in the West where until recent years 
the soil was so new as to permit continued cropping and still 
produce satisfactory crops. There are still some sections in 
the more recently developed areas of the western half of the 
country where the soil has not yet become materially depleted, 
but it is only a question of time when all sections will be com- 
pelled to make some provision against the depletion of soil 
fertility. Commercial fertilizers have been used extensively for 
generations in the east and have the advantage in that they are 
easily applied. They do not, however, add any humus to the 
soil and in this respect do not furnish a complete solution of the 
problem of maintaining the fields in the proper condition. 

One other method is to feed the crop on the farm and re- 
turn the manure to the soil. This is the practice usually adopt- 
ed on the dairy farms where grain brought in from outside 
sources increases the value of the manure returned to the ground. 
There are a number of points in which this method is not of uni- 
versal application. In the first place, it is usually impossible 
to keep from losing nearly half of the original value of the manure 



INTRODUCTION 13 

by loss of much of the liquid portion, and by the leaching of 
fertilizing materials and escape of valuable gases into the air. 
Such farms can be only partially kept up by the use of manure 
produced from feed produced upon the farm itself. This means 
that the land from which this extra feed was secured must go 
without its quota of manure. Such a method is satisfactory for 
the individual farm, but it is apparent that all farms in the 
country could not be run in this manner as there would then be 
no lands from which feed for the extra manure could be obtained. 
In addition to this lack of universal application the labor inci- 
dent to the scattering of the manure over the land is extremely 
great. In the green manure crops we have the scattering al- 
ready accomplished by nature, and all that remains to do is to 
turn it under for the hungry soil. A ton of the green plant 
growth is about equal to a ton of manure as regards its fertiliz- 
ing value and an ordinary growth of a green manure crop will 
produce quite as great a tonnage as is usually applied to the soil 
in the form of barn-yard or stable manure. 

The principal disadvantage incident to the use of green 
manures is that the field cannot be utilized in producing a regu- 
lar farm crop while it is producing its crop of green manure. 
Unless either the green manure or the regular crop can be seeded 
the same season, the use of the land is lost for the entire season. 
The greatly increased yield of the succeeding crop is the justifica- 
tion of such a practice. It is considered quite as profitable to 
crop one half the acreage if enough more than double the yield 
can be secured by this method, to pay for the seed and labor 
attending the use of the green manure crop. In deciding which 
green manure crop should be used for a specific purpose a num- 
ber of points should be taken into consideration. Choice may 
be made between those that make most of their growth in the 
fall, winter and early spring and those that grow only in the sum- 
mer time. The former class has the advantage in that a summer 
growing cash crop can usually be planted after a winter growing 
crop has been turned under in the spring. Preference should 
be given a leguminous crop if it be available as such a crop will in 



14 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

addition to its other benefits, naturally increase the nitrogen 
content of the soil. Other points that are of more or less mo- 
ment are the cost of the seed, the deep or shallow rooting quali- 
ties of the plants, their ability to compete with the weeds and 
the ease with which the crop may be turned under. The supple- 
mental value as pasture or as hay in emergency should also be 
considered. If pastured and the stock kept continually upon 
the land the net loss to the land is not great, while if cut for hay 
there will still be the stubble and roots available for soil improve- 
ment purposes. Even weeds are valuable as green manures if 
plowed under before they mature their seed. Their value is 
frequently as great as that of a light application of ordinary 
barnyard manure. 

Liming may be necessary to correct any acidity due to the 
decay of the green crop. This may be best applied before turn- 
ing under the crop. It may even be applied before seeding 
the green manure crop, especially if it be a legume needing lime 
in the soil. The complete results from a green manure crop are 
not secured until it has completely decayed and assumed soluble 
form so as to be available to the succeeding crops. This may re- 
quire two or three years so that the beneficial results from the 
plowing under of a green manure crop are usually manifest for 
more than one season. Tillage hastens the decay of organic 
matter and for this reason it is usually best to follow the green 
manure crop with some cultivated crop as corn, cotton or tobacco 
depending upon the locality. 

Many of the green manure crops permit of their being left 
on the fields over winter either in the green state or matured. 
In either case they perform valuable service as a cover crop, 
preventing the soil from washing and assisting in holding the 
snow which might blow off the otherwise windswept fields. 

If a complete system of green manuring be installed upon 
the farm, the doing away with the pasturing of stock, avoids the 
necessity of inside fences which are the source of a great deal of 
expense both as to original cost as well as maintenance. Under 
such a system the soiling of crops for the necessary livestock 



INTRODUCriON^'l'^l 111:3 ^flS 



i :\ '\ ] M »] 



would be practiced to a much greater extent than is at present 
the case. This is, however, in line with the best practice since 
more than double the niunber of stock can be maintained on a 
given acreage where the green feed is cut and fed to the stock 
than where the cattle are allowed to trample it in pasturing it off 
for themselves. In fact the intensive farming of a few acres has 
been repeatedly shown to be quite as profitable as the ordinary 
treatment of a much greater acreage. The intelligent use of 
green manures will facilitate any endeavors to further the in- 
tensive culture and upbuilding of the farm. 



CHAPTER II. 



COVERING THE SOIL. 



WHEN green crops are raised to improve the land it is not in- 
dispensable that they should be ploughed in to accomplish 
this object. You need not turn them in till you are under the 
necessity of doing it to prepare the ground for a future crop. 
But if the green dressing should be Hungarian millet or white 
mustard, or anything that might seed the ground at an improper 
time, you can either plough it in or cut it down when in blossom, 
and it will improve the soil in proportion to its ability to shelter it. 
Cuthbert W. Johnson says: "An English farmer inadvertent- 
ly left for some months a door in his fallow field; for several 
years after the crops were particularly luxuriant where the 
door had been lying — so much so that one would have said that 
some rich manure had been applied to that spot." 

Anderson, an eminent Scotch writer, says in his Economy of 
Manures: "Every practical farmer knows or ought to know, for 
the facts are constantly before his observation, that land can 
be made exceedingly fertile without manure. He must have 
noticed that if any portion of the soil has been covered, either 
accidentally or designedly for some time, by water, stone, plank, 
logs, chips, brush, rails, corn-stalks, straw, buildings of every 
description, with hay or straw ricks, leaves or clover — and in 
fact, that under any and every substance which has covered 
surface closely — it (the surface soil) invariably becomes exceed- 
ingly fertile, and that the degree of this fertility is totally indepen- 
dent of the covering substance." 

After reading these remarkable statements of Johnson 
and Anderson, both men of extensive observation and intelli- 
gence, we can more fully credit the experiments of Gurney in 
England upon his fields of grass. 



COVERING THE SOIL 17 

Green grass covered with straw gave him in one month five 
thousand eight hundred and seventy pounds per acre. The same 
kind of grass uncovered produced but two thousand two hundred 
and seven pounds. No rain fell during this experiment. An- 
other plot gave in one month, when covered, three thousand four 
hundred and sixty pounds per acre, while the rival lot, not cover- 
ed, yielded but nine hundred and seventy pounds. Clover that 
was covered grew six inches, while that uncovered grew but 
one inch and a half. 

And where a certain quantity of stall dung would double the 
crop of grass the mulch spread on top of the manure would 
increase the crop six times. He used about one ton and a half 
of straw per acre. 

"Boussingault found upon comparing water obtained by 
melting two portions of snow — one taken immediately as it 
fell upon a stone terrace, and the other (from the same fall), 
after it had lian for thirty-six hours upon the soil of a contiguous 
garden — that the second contained ten times as much ammonia 
as the other. It is well known that snow has a most beneficial 
effect upon soils, and, amongst other causes, Boussingault be- 
lieves that it may act in preventing ammoniacal emanations from 
the soil." — Journal oftJie Royal Agricultural Society of England. 

Now , we can believe there is much truth in the old proverb, 
that "Snow is the poor man's manure." 

Not having straw nor any barnyard material to top-dress 
his wheat, he has often noticed that his crop was much better 
when kind Nature covered it for him. 

Does not this investigation of the great chemist reveal to us 
one, if not more, of the deep and far-reaching causes why mulch- 
ing is so beneficial to the land ? 

Professor Johnson says: "The ammonia of the soil is con- 
stantly in motion or suffering change, and does not accumulate 
to any great extent. In summer the soil daily absorbs ammonia 
from the air, receives it by rains and dews, or acquires it by 
the decay of vegetable and animal matter. Daily, too, ammonia 
wastes from the soil by volatilization, accompanying the vapor 



18 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

of water which almost unceasingly escapes into the atmosphere." 
— How Crops Feed, p. 247. 

This is a revelation of scientific truth which cannot be mis- 
understood or explained away . Was ever a stern necessity to do 
anything more clearly demonstrated to the world ? We must 
keep the soil covered to promote and retain its richness. But 
how often do we strip the ground naked, and then bake it in the 
ever-burning sun! 

Col, Waring, of Ogden Farm, says: "I had read so much 
about top-dressing that it was determined to try it on this ap- 
parently forlorn hope, and the land was all covered before 
the heavy rains that fell early in May. The result was almost 
magical. While that portion which had looked so promising as 
to seem not to need manure did not yield 1000 pounds per acre 
of poor hay, ox-eyed daisy and red sorrel, this poorer part, 
solely as an effect of the top-dressing, produced fully 4000 
pounds per acre of very fair hay." 



CHAPTER III. 

SURFACE MANURING. 

NOT many years ago it was the universal custom to plough in 
manure the very day or hour that it was spread upon the 
field. Farmers became irritable and had butlittletosayif any- 
thing prevented immediate ploughing after the precious contents 
of the barnyard were spread broadcast before their eyes. It was 
a prevalent opinion that nearly all the richness would dry out 
in a few days if exposed to the weather. 

They had often noticed that manure under cover was about 
twice as good as that which lay out of doors all summer, but they 
did not discover that the great injury which it had received was 
owing to the leaching rains, which dissolved and carried off its 
richest elements, and not to the sunlight which occasionally fell 
upon it. 

When manure is spread it soon becomes dry, and then all 
chemical changes cease; fermentation is arrested; it will decay 
no more in that condition. And when the dews settle and the 
rains descend upon it, it will dissolve, day after day, and a 
peculiar dark rich coffee will effectually saturate the soil be- 
neath it. 

In the Genesee Farmer John Johnston says to Joseph Harris : 
"I am not surprised at your correspondent, Buckeye, being 
opposed to surface manuring. I would have been so myself had 
not experience taught me better. I have used manure only as a 
top-dressing for the last twenty-six years, and I do think one 
load used that way is worth far more than two ploughed under 
on our stiff land." 

Nearly ten years after this was written he speaks, if possible, 
with even a stronger faith than ever in defence of his favorite 
practice. 

Harris writes in Walks and Talks, No. 112, that "John 
Johnston, who has a far heavier clay soil than the deacon, says 



20 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

he has found by actual trial that one load of rotted manure ap- 
plied as a top-dressing to grass-land in the autumn, and the 
land ploughed up and planted to corn in the spring, is worth as 
much as three loads of fresh manure ploughed under." 

Major Dickinson, another able and extensive farmer, de- 
clares: "I hold that one load of manure on the surface is worth 
two loads ploughed in." 

Charles B. Calvert, a distinguished farmer of Maryland, "is 
a strong advocate of the application of stable manures ujjon the 
surface, instead of ploughing them in." — Cultivator. 

Mr. Bright writes in the Gardener s Monthly: 
"The practice of top-dressing or of surface manuring has long 
been the favorite method employed by all intelligent gardeners 
within the circle of my acquaintance. A piece of soil heavily 
shaded by surface manuring actually decomposes like a manure- 
heap; that is, it undergoes a sort of putrefaction or chemical 
change which sets free its chemical constituents, unlocks, as it 
were its locked-up manurial treasures, and fits its natural ele- 
ments to become the food of plants. Manure, then, I say, 
chiefly upon the surface. Do not waste your manures by 
mixing them deeply with the soil. Surface manuring and 
mulching are the true doctrines. I am sure of it." 

In Todd's Young Farmer's Manual I find the following 
statement: "James M. Garnet, a Virginia farmer, an excellent 
writer on agriculture, says: T began penning my cattle late 
in the spring, and continued it until frost in pens of the same 
size, moved at regular intervals of time, and containing the same 
number of cattle during the whole period. These pens were 
alternately ploughed and left unploughed until the following 
spring, when all were planted in corn, immediately followed 
by wheat. The superiority of both crops on all the pens which 
had remained unploughed for so many months after the cattle 
had manured them was just as distinctly marked as if the divid- 
ing fences had continued standing; it was too plain even to ad- 
mit of the slightest doubt." 



SURFACE MANURING 21 

"A near neighbor, a young farmer, had made the same experi- 
ment on somewhat different soil the year before, but with results 
precisely the same. Similar trials I have made and seen made 
by others with dry straw alternately ploughed in as soon as 
spread, and left on the surface until the next spring. In every 
case the last method proved best, so far as the following crop 
would prove it. 

"The same experiment has been made by myself and others 
of my acquaintance, with manure from the horse-stables and 
winter farm -pens, consisting of much unrotted corn-offal, and 
without a solitary exception either seen by me or heard of the 
surface application after the corn was planted produced most 
manifestly the best crop. 

"Upon these numerous concurrent and undeniable facts my 
opinion has been founded, that it is best to apply manure on the 
surface of the land." 

An able writer in the Cultivator in 1843 says: 
"I have seen spots where cattle had been penned at night for a 
month or two; for six years afterward, the vegetation was double 
on those spots to any other part of the field, although all the 
manure had been carefully removed and scattered about. Now, 
nothing but the liquid could have gone into the earth, and yet the 
rains of six years never washed away the beneficial effects." 

On steep slopes, however, when the rains run off too rapidly 
without sinking into the soil it may be best to turn under the 
manure. Of two evils choose the lesser. If plowed under 
too deeply however it will be so deep that the bacteria cannot 
work upon it to make it available to the succeeding crops. 

Now, if the valuable material of the barnyard will not suffer 
waste when spread upon the oj)en fields, and is better there 
than anywhere else, then the green crop, whatever it may be, 
that is raised to improve the land, should be mown down in 
summer and in autumn, and should be left upon the surface as 
long as possible — to prevent evaporation, to disintegrate the soil, 
to retain moisture, to be leached by rains and dews, and finally 
to enrich the ground by its total decomposition. 



CHAPTER rV. 

WATER AS A SOLVENT. 

THE mineral constituents of the bones of man and animals 
are but the asJies of our daily food. 

Every year from the rock and soil these ashes come, decom- 
posed and dissolved by water, carbonic acid and oxygen. 

Green manures, by their ability to collect and preserve mois- 
ture on the surface and in the soil when cut down or ploughed in, 
render an immense assistance in the growth of the organic world. 
Water is the olood of vegetation. It carries nourishment from 
the ground to the stem, to the leaf, to the seed. In its solvent 
action rocks become the food of man. 

When the soil is dry no mouldering down to a finer dust, no 
disintegration of minerals, no decay of any kind, can be dis- 
covered; every atom, apparently stationary, seems fixed and firm 
as adamant. 

Travellers tell us that in the dry air of Egypt the old monu- 
ments erected thousands of years ago are just as fresh and smooth 
in outline as if the chisel had finished them but yesterday. But 
when some of these relics of the past were transported to Paris, 
in the moist climate of France they soon began to change, and 
atom by atom to crumble away. 

Dr. Youmans says : 'It has been shown by extensive experi- 
ments that no species of rock whatever will resist the solvent 
action of water impregnated with carbonic acid." — Atlas of 
Chemistry, p. 50. 

What an instructive lesson! How valuable to the farmer! 
Such knowledge, how exceedingly useful! — that in our daily 
effort to convert the earth upon which we tread into a flourish- 
ing vegetation we can combine and concentrate the forces of 
nature by covering the ground, that moisture and carbonic acid 
may do a great work for man. 



WATER AS A SOLVENT 23 

Yes, so vastly important is the benefit that may be derived 
from mulching with green manures that we not only see it in 
the augmentation of our crops and the improvement of our till- 
able soil, but it may be observed in the condition of the forests 
around us. Those that have a deposit of leaves undisturbed for 
years about their roots make an annual growth much greater 
than those which have been robbed of their carpet of dead 
foliage by the winds or by the hand of man. 

"The fallen leaves," says Liebig, "contain such trifling 
quantities of potash and phosphoric acid in comparison to their 
mass that it is difficult to account for the injurious consequences 
arising from the raking up and removal of the fallen leaves in 
woods." 

It is difficult only when we forget the conditions existing in the 
woods. There the protection of the soil, the perpetual moisture, 
and the carbonic acid constantly forming, work without ceasing 
beneath the mulch, crumbling and mouldering the minerals into 
an impalpable and soluble state, ready to be absorbed by plants 
or trees. 

Liebig admits that "the injury is perhaps rather attributable 
to the fact that the remains of leaves and plants constitute a 
lasting source of carbonic acid, which, carried by the rain to 
the deeper layers, must powerfully contribute to disintegrate 
and decompose the earthly particles." 

These substantial truths should establish the advantage, if 
not the necessity, of shelter and moisture to improve the soil, and 
also to promote the growth of our crops. 

Yet there is no scarcity of water in our favored country. 

We have a rainfall of four thousand tons per acre every year. 
But what becomes of it ? 

Professor Johnson says: "According to the observations of 
Dickinson at Abbot's Hill, Hertfordshire, England, and con- 
tinued through eight years, ninety per cent, of the water falling 
between April 1st and October 1st evaporates from the surface 
of the soil, only ten per cent, finding its way into drains laid 
three and four feet deep." — How Crops Feed, p. 197. 



24 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

This , we presume, is about the amount of evaporation in the 
United States. Then what a magnificent prospect is here pre- 
sented ! 

Mighty rivers are pouring, not down the deep valleys, but 
upward from our broad fields to the blue sky above us. 

Yes, every square mile of territory sends a constant flood, 
rushing, though invisible, to the vast seas in the viewless air. 

Could all the streams from a single State be concentrated 
into one torrent, it would outroar Niagara as it dashed against 
the clouds. 

But what becomes of the poor little ten per cent, of water 
that goes sparkling down the ravines to its ocean home ? Is it 
allowed to depart in peace .'^ No; the farmer at great expense 
cuts channels along the hillside to irrigate the sloping plains, and 
the results prove that it pays to do it. 

All this is done while the ninety per cent, of fluid is passing 
away without an effort made to save it. We do not need it all — 
no, not the half of it. We know by covering the land we can re- 
tain enough except in the arid sections, for all the wants of 
vegetation. 

To have a vigorous and uninterrupted growth we must have 
moisture in the soil, and we must retain it there from rain to rain 
or we will have a partial failure in our crops. 

Professor Johnson says: "The great deserts of the world are 
not sterile because they cannot yield the soil-food required by 
vegetation, but because they are destitute of water." 

He also says : "Poor soils give good crops in seasons of plenti- 
ful and well-distributed rain or when skillfully irrigated, but in- 
sufficient moisture in the soil is an evil that no supplies of plant- 
food can neutralize." 

The cause of this will be plain on a moment's reflection. 
Plants can only take up their food in a fluid condition. 

Mr. Lawes proved that an acre of wheat in five months and 
eighteen days evaporated through its leaves three hundred and 
fifty-five and a quarter tons of water. Now, every drop of this 
water was more or less instrumental in transporting a little atom 



WATER AS A SOLVENT 25 

of food from the soil to some part of the plant, and when the 
deposit was made, being no longer needed, the water passed oflF 
through the leaves. 

Liebig also teaches this doctrine. He says: 
"Though the soil be ever so rich in the elements of food for 
plants, still the latter will not grow in hot weather if there be a 
deficiency of moisture in the soil, for the moisture in the soil is 
the channel through which mineral food has to reach the interior 
of plants." 

The reader who has not been a careful observer of the changes 
in nature and the amount of rainfall year after year will be very 
likely to suppose that drouth is a plague that very seldom visits 
our much-favored land, and hence he may consider it useless 
to spend much time in devising means to remedy the evil. But 
what are the facts.? 

The Cultivator says: "Seasons of drouth of more or less 
severity are of frequent occurrence in our climate. Weeks, 
and even months, pass with little or no rain; the scorching glare 
of the sun drinks up our summer brooks and turns the fields to 
dust or brick-like clods beneath its influence. The growing 
crops are shrivelled and dwarfed by the heat." 

This strong picture received an alarming confirmation of its 
truth in the then new State of Kansas. No rain fell during all 
the spring nor in the first month of summer, and there was a 
total failure in the crops of wheat. Dr. Armor, an able farmer 
in that State, who called on me the same year, said he made no 
attempt to gather the few grains of wheat which grew on little 
stems only three inches high, but gave an order when he left 
home in July to plough up the fields for reseeding in autumn. 

Indeed, water is so indispensable in the process of vegetable 
nutrition that only a fortnight of dry weather apparently checks 
the vigor and freshness of the green world around us. 

Everywhere throughout the irrigated sections of the West 
there is usually too little water available to furnish all the land 
with an abundance of moisture. By proper method of retaining 
and conserving this moisture much less will be needed. 



CHAPTER V. 



TILLAGE A MANURE. 



IN estimating the expense of raising green crops for manure we 
must not deduct the cost of ploughing and harrowing from the 
value of the green dressing, because tillage is manure, and often 
the very best manure which we can apply to many fields, par- 
ticularly to heavy clays. 

Liebig says: "The influence of the mechanical operations of 
agriculture upon the fertility of a soil, however imperfectly the 
earthly particles may be mixed by the process, is remarkable, 
and often borders upon the marvellous." 

The truth of this declaration has often been established by 
the experience of many observing farmers. Here is one case. 

Mechi, England's model farmer says, "I knew a farmer, who 
took a good farm wretchedly out of condition and full of weeds. 
He fallowed every acre of it, taking care to allow time between 
each ploughing for the germination of the seeds. The result 
was a crop of wheat averaging five and a half quarters (forty- 
four bushels) per acre, and other crops in proportion. He was 
a wise man." 

Now, in connection with this good tillage had he put on the 
field somebody's "nitrogenized superphosphate of lime," it is 
very likely all the credit would have been given to it, and we 
might have had his certificate that forty-four bushels of wheat per 
acre were actually obtained by using only three hundred pounds 
on each acrea of this wonderful fertilizer. 

With such facts before him, we are not surprised that Mechi 
says: "Frequent tillage is our best and cheapest manure." 

The farm of Joseph Harris has enough of clay in the soil to 
require frequent ploughing and harrowing to bring out and un- 
lock its highest productive capacity; hence he has discovered 



TILLAGE A MANURE 27 

the great benefit of thorough pulverization. He says: "That 
tillage and manure are one and the same thing is a great truth." 

Taking this natural and rational view of the subject, it would 
be very unjust to any green crop which is intended for manure to 
charge it with anything but the seed. And this will reduce the 
expense of this mode of improvement to a very low figure. 

Harris also says: "On heavy land we have not yet been able 
to dispense with summer fallowing." 

John Johnston, a noted farmer of New York State, rich as he 
has made his land, is yet in the habit of summer fallowing more 
or less every year. 

His practice has been to top-dress his cloverland in the fall, 
and the next spring to plough it up and prepare the land for 
wheat by ploughing it twice more, with repeated harrowings, 
rolling, etc. In other words, he manures the land in the fall 
and then gives it a good old-fashioned summer fallow. 

Here, you perceive, are three ploughings and enough of har- 
rowing to seed the ground with two green crops and to turn them 
in when grown without any extra expense. And this tillage is 
never done all at once. It is said that there should always be 
six or eight weeks between each ploughing. This method 
would be very accommodating to nearly all kinds of green 
manures. 

Observe how careful Farmer Johnston is to neglect noth- 
ing that will ensure him a large crop of wheat. No wonder he 
often raises fifty bushels per acre! We see here that the whole 
of one year is devoted to the preparation of the soil. 

He does not confine himself entirely to this mode. Under 
another heading we will show that he ploughs in clover in June 
for wheat. And, notwithstanding he makes from five hundred 
to a thousand tons of the very best manure every year, he does 
not compel his fields to produce a crop of either grass or gain, 
to be removed every year. And that is the true philosophy of 
farming — every other year devoted to the entire restoration of 
the soil. On light, sandy land much tillage is not required, only 



28 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

to subdue the weeds, and for this purpose, to assist the plough 
and hoe, there is nothing to be compared to green crops. 

The way these act in the destruction of weeds is not as freely 
acknowledged as it should be, because not clearly understood. 
When a quick -growing crop is put in the ground, all weed 
seeds that are on or near the surface sprout and make a feeble 
growth, but do not mature enough to form a blossom or a seed. 
In this way tens of millions of noxious weeds will germinate and 
perish beneath the dense shadow of a green crop. 



CHAPTER VI. 



GREEN MANURES. 



ALDERMAN MECHI says: "I have noticed a very money- 
getting farmer in my neighborhood who never keeps any 
live-stock except a couple of cows, and who never buys any 
feeding-stuffs or manures. 

"He keeps his land clean and fertile by ploughing in green 
crops, which require no hoeing or labor, and only one ploughing. 
I know he makes money, for he often purchases land. It is the 
opinion of some knowing hands that this farmer manages to 
get better profits than his neighbors who adopt the ordinary 
system." 

This testimony comes from one who has no superior as an 
honorable and upright man and able farmer. Therefore his 
words are worthy of a most careful study. Look at the full 
weight and meaning of these expressions: 

"A very money-getting farmer. I know he makes money, 
for he often purchases land." 

There is not a farmer in the wide world who would not be 
glad and happy if his good neighbor could say that about him. 

Whence comes this undoubted prosperity? Does he keep 
thousands of sheep or hundreds of milch-cows of the purest 
grades ? No. Does he sell Essex pigs or choice calves for al- 
most their weight in silver ? No, nothing of the kind. 

The whole cause of his certain success is told in two words — 
green manures. 

Well, if one man has accomplished so much in this mode of 
farming, have we no details of actual experiments on record to 
confirm such statements ? Yes, we have. Here is one of great 
value, because the facts are clearly given and are undeniable. 



30 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

"In October, 1819," said the late Dr. Browne of Gorlstone, 
in Suffolk, "a violent gale of wind drove to this part of the coast 
an unprecedented quantity of seaweeds. These were eagerly 
scrambled for, and, from my greater vicinity to the beach, I 
collected twenty-seven cart-loads — each as much as four horses 
could draw. I spread mine fresh and wet upon little more than 
an acre of bean stubble, instantly ploughed it in, and dibbled 
wheat upon it. 

"On the 6th of October I then salted the adjoining land with 
three bushels per acre, manured it with fifteen loads of farmyard- 
dung per acre, and dibbled it with wheat on the 15th of Novem- 
ber. The result was that the seaweeded portion gave three 
times the produce of any equal part of the field." — Farmer s 
Encyclo'pcedia, p. 582. 

How did it happen that this green manure produced three 
times as much wheat as the dung from the barnyard ? Certainly 
the nitrogen in this weed was available. It could not be other- 
wise. And it is very probable, it was much more so, than that 
in the yard-manure. 

Now comes the interesting question : In what condition does 
nitrogen exist in seaweed? In the form of albuminoids, there 
is not a shadow of doubt, just as we find it in clover, in Hun- 
garian grass and in all vegetation. And we have the authority 
of Boussingault that there is less nitrogen in seaweed than in 
clover, and we know there are less phosphoric acid and less pot- 
ash in the former than in the latter plant. 

Then would not the same amount of clover or Hungarian 
grass, with salt, have brought the same result? 

And what a vast difference in the cost of these plants! All 
the doctor could get would only cover a little more than an acre. 
To obtain any more of it he would have had to buy it. What it 
would cost in Engliand we do not know. In this country it is 
about the price of good manure. 

Col. Waring says that seaweed costs three to four dollars per 
cord on the beach. While this price continues, of course it can 
only be used to advantage by those living near the coast. We 



GREEN MANURES 31 

advise every one who can raise a good crop of clover with bone- 
dust and lime or plaster to depend on it, unless he can get the 
sea-weed at a much less figure than three dollars per cord. 

We feel deeply interested in this experiment of Dr. Browne. 
We hope it will satistfy all manure-makers that green plants can 
be converted into plant-food without undergoing the process of 
digestion in the stomachs of cattle. 

And, more than this, it should be noticed that solution and 
oxidation can take place in full time to furnish all the nourish- 
ment required to produce a good crop of wheat. 

And that the conversion of vegetable matter into manure in 
the barnyard is not necessary may be proved by another careful 
experiment: 

"The following I know to be a fact. A person brought up as 
a farmer in Scotland was sent to an estate in one of the Windward 
Islands to improve the system of tillage. Not being able to 
manure a field of six acres that had been much exhausted by 
frequent cropping, he resolved to give the pigeon-pea a fair trial; 
he accordingly sowed them so thick that in a few months the 
ground was effectually covered to the height of six feet. He then 
cut down this mass of vegetation, and immediately buried the 
whole under the large banks that are raised in digging cane-holes. 
His first crop gave him but six hogsheads of sugar. Instead of 
allowing the canes to shoot up again, as they will, he planted the 
pigeon-pea and proceeded as before; this second crop yielded 
twelve hogsheads of sugar, as the benefit of the first decayed 
bushes was then felt. He tried the peas a third time, and his 
crop was eighteen hogsheads. Finding the improvement was 
so wonderful, he resolved on a fourth trial, and the six acres 
yielded twenty-four hogsheads, which is considered b, first-rate 
crop, equal to one hundred bushels of com in this country." — 
Cultivator, 1842. 



CHAPTER VII. 



LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURE. 



IT was recognized by the ancients that when plants of the pea or 
bean family were turned under they gave a greater increase 
in the succeeding crops than did like quantities of the nonlegu- 
minous plants. For centuries the real reason for this increased 
benefit was not known. It has been only within recent years 
that this reason has been discovered. Professors Hellriegel 
and Wilfarch two European scientists showed in 1886 that the 
true explanation of the remarkable effect of legumes on the fer- 
tility of the land is that the plants by means of the bacteria 
which are able to live in the tubercles on their roots are able to 
extract the nitrogen from the air and work it up into a form 
which can be utilized by all classes of plants. 

If one will examine the roots of leguminous plants he will 
doubtless see on many of them small nodules or tubercles. 
These vary considerably in size depending on the kind of plant 
being examined. The differences in the size and shape of the 
tubercles on the roots of the different species is often so marked 
that it is possible to determine merely by looking at the tuber- 
cles what plant they were taken from. Those on the roots of 
red clover are roundish and quite small being about the size of 
mustard seed or millet seed. The vetches bear tubercles which 
are very irregular in shape and size. The cowpea tubercles 
are nearly round, smooth, and about the size of buckshot. 

Thus it will be seen therefore that the presence of these bac- 
teria upon the.roots is of prime importance for without them the 
plant is reduced to the same basis as the non-legumes. It 
suffers acutely from this condition moreover because it has been 
in the habit of having an abundant supply of nitrogen to draw 
upon for its own needs which demand large quantities of this 



GREEN MANURES 33 

important element. The high protein content of the plants 
require the nitrogen if the plant is to make a healthy growth. 
Nearly every legume has one particular strain of bacteria which 
can live and thrive upon its roots and ordinarily this strain will 
not live on the roots of any other kind of legume. The bacteria 
upon the soy bean is different from those upon the cowpea and 
neither sort can exist on the other plant. The red clover bacteria 
is different from the kind growing on the alfalfa roots and cannot 
be used to inoculate the alfalfa. On the other hand the bacteria 
found in connection with the sweet clover as well as the bur 
clover and yellow trefoil can all be used to inoculate alfalfa 
quite as successfully as when the alfalfa bacteria is utilized. 

When a leguminous crop has been grown for years in a sec- 
tion the soil is very likely to contain so many of the proper 
bacteria that no attention need be given to the securing of 
inoculation. However, when a legume is new in a locality it is 
usually necessary to provide in some way for the inoculation. 
This can be done by treating the seed with pure cultures or with 
soil from some healthy field of the same crop or from some crop 
which has bacteria known to be efficient in inoculate the particu- 
lar crop that is being seeded. If but a small amount ot soil be 
available the seed should be slightly moistened, spread out in a 
shady place and a few pounds of the soil from the old field 
sifted over the moist seed. As soon as the seed is stirred and 
fairly dry it should be seeded without the sun having shone upon 
it. In case the seed is broadcasted it should be sown immediate- 
ly in front of the harrow. The seed may also be sown on a clou- 
dy day or in the evening. If ample soil is available it may be 
drilled in or scattered after the manner of lime or fertilizer. This 
too must be harrowed in without allowing it to lie in the sun to 
kill the germs. 

When the legumes are well supplied with tubercles the growth 
of the plant is not only more vigorous but the plant itself is 
much richer in composition. The Michigan Experiment Sta- 
tion performed an interesting experiment with soy beans where 
it was found that plants well supplied with tubercles produced 



34 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

114 pounds of nitrogen per acre while those without tubercles 
produced only 76 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Cowpeas with 
tubercles on their roots yielded 139 pounds of nitrogen per acre. 
a,s compared with 118 pounds for the non-tubercled plants. 
The Illinois Experiment station showed that inoculated cow- 
pea plants contained 3.96 per cent, of nitrogen as compared with 
•only 2.22 per cent, for the plants not supplied with tubercles. 
These figures not only show the value of leguminous green 
manures but also indicate the great desirability of having them 
well inoculated with the nitrogen gathering bacteria. 

The legume roots are rich in fertilizing elements. Their 
dry roots contain an average of between eight and nine dollars 
worth of fertilizer materials per ton. 

In regard to length of life and manner of growth the legumes 
may be divided into three classes or groups. (1) Biennials 
and perennials such as sweet clover, red clover, alsike clover and 
alfalfa; (2) Winter annuals, planted in the fall and maturing 
early the following spring as hairy vetch, crimson clover and 
bur clover: (3) Summer annuals such as cowpeas and soybeans. 
From these groups it is usually possible to make a selection of a 
crop suited both to the climatic conditions and also to the rota- 
tion practiced upon the particular farm in question. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RED CLOVER AS A GREEN MANURE. 

RED Clover is probably the most common green manure crop 
in the country. It usually lives two years from one seed- 
ing when it is plowed under for the purpose of adding humus and 
nitrogen to the soil. Before it is turned under it is usually pas- 
tured to some extent and often one crop of hay and one of seed 
are secured. When especially large crops of grain are desired 
it is usually desirable to cut the first crop of the second season 
early enough so that it may be allowed to lie on the field without 
smothering the second crop which should be plowed under when 
it reaches its maximum size. On the poorer soils this is an 
especially commendable practice and it will be found that on 
such soils the first crop is not apt to be so heavy that the succeed- 
ing crop cannot grow up through it. 

One reason for the great favor in which red clover is held is 
the ease with which it lends itself to the general systems of rota- 
tion commonly practiced in the red clover areas of the country. 
The value of red clover on the farm makes it usually desirable 
that a considerable proportion of the acreage of the farm be at 
all times seeded down to this crop. The fact that it can usually 
be seeded in grain in the spring and thus make its early growth 
while the land is producing a money crop makes its establish- 
ment in a field a comparatively simple matter if there be plenty 
of humus in the ground. There is no loss of the use of the land 
for the entire season nor does it call for any special preparation of 
the ground or application of fertilizers to secure and maintain 
satisfactory stands upon the ordinary farm. If the soil be some- 
what run down and not what might be called a strong soil a three 
year rotation with clover is best. That is the clover when plowed 
under is followed with corn which in turn is followed with some 



36 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

small grain crop in which the new seeding of clover is made in 
the spring. On the stronger soils one or two additional crops 
of corn or small grain may intervene between the clover crops. 
The Illinois Experiment Station showed as a result of one of its 
lengthy experiments that clover is very efficient in a three year 
rotation in maintaining the yield of corn. This test ran thirty 
years and the plot continuously in com produced an average of 




Roots of red clover showing nodules. 



RED CLOVER AS A GREEN MANURE 37 

only 25 bushels per acre while the plot given over to the produc- 
tion of com, oats, and clover in a three year rotation produced 
com at the average rate of 59 bushels per acre — more than 
double the yield given where no clover entered into the rotation 
and not making note of the fact that the soil was fairly fertile 
to start with and presumably gave reasonably large yields during 
the first few years of the experiment. 

The fertilizing value of the red clover plant is by no means 
confined to the upper portions or the parts above ground. Ex- 
periments have shown that from 30 to 50 % of the fertilizing 
value of the plants may lie in the roots and stubble which may 
be plowed under even though the tops be cut and utilized as hay 
although of course the ground will be made decidedly richer if 
the entire crop be returned to the soil. In one experiment per- 
formed by the Delaware Experiment Station it was found that a 
single acre of red clover produced 122 pounds of nitrogen, 68 
pounds of potash and 28 pounds of phosphoric acid. At pre- 
sent prices for fertilizers clover hay itself contains nearly $10.00 
worth of fertilizer elements per ton. As another illustration of 
the value of red clover in increasing the yield of succeeding crops 
an experiment performed by the Ontario Experiment Station 
may be mentioned. One series of plots was planted to grain 
alone and a second series to clover mixed with the same kind of 
grains as were seeded in the first series. When the clover was 
well grown after the grain harvest all plots were plowed under in 
October. The following Spring all the plots were seeded to 
oats. The plots previously in clover for only the one short sea- 
son yielded at the rate of 50 bushels per acre while the plots that 
had been seeded to grain alone yielded only 39 bushels per acre. 
To determine if the effect of the clover extended over more than 
one season these oat plots were seeded to barley the next season 
with the result that an average of nearly 38 bushels per acre was 
obtained from the old clover plots as compared with 29 bushels 
per acre for the plots which had not had the clover seeded upon 
them two seasons previous. It was thus clearly shown that 
the beneficial effect of the plowing under of a crop of green 



38 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

clover even though it be of only one seasons growth lasts for at 
least two seasons. 

In another experiment one series of plots were seeded to 
grass alone and another to grass and clover mixed. The 
grass stubble when turned under gave a yield of oats at the 
rate of 35 bushels per acre while the plots upon which had been 
seeded a mixture of grass and clover the yield of oats was 35 
bushels per acre after the stubble had been plowed under. In 
still another experiment in the same series the increase amounted 
to 28 per cent, in the case of potatoes and to 40 per cent, in the 
case of fodder corn. 

Enough has been said to indicate the remarkable effect of a 
crop of red clover upon the land. Too much however must not 
be expected of this crop. While it does add abundant supplies 
of nitrogen and humus to the soil to enter into the composition 
of the increased yields yet it does not make any direct addition 
of ash and phosphoric acid to the soil. These two substances 
are just as essential to the growth of the plant as is the nitrogen 
and when the soil becomes depleted in them they must be added 
in some form of fertilizer. The production of red clover on 
most farms is too well understood to make an extended discus- 
sion of such matters necessary. It will grow on a large variety 
of soils but those best suited to its growth are the deep clay loams 
and limestone soils which are suitably drained. If the drainage 
be poor the consequent heaving of the ground in the spring is 
apt to lift the clover plants out by the roots. On low damp soils 
it is best to seed the Alsike clover which is especially adapted 
to such situations. 

Red clover is usually seeded in the early spring although in 
Western Oregon and Western Washington and in most of the 
Southern States it is a common practice to seed the clover in the 
Fall. About 12 pounds of seed is used when the clover is sown 
alone while if in mixtures about 8 pounds ordinarily suffices. 
Under favorable conditions and with special care as to getting the 
seed evenly scattered a good stand of clover alone may be secured 
by seeding but 8 pounds to the acre. It is ordinarily seeded in 



RED CLOVER AS A GREEN MANURE 39 

the early spring on a stand of small grain when the ground is 
honeycombed with the frost. The thawing of the ground in the 
middle of the day effectually covers the seed. 

The utilization of red clover has been materially handicapped 
during recent years by the fact that the clover for some reason 
refuses to hold its stand as successfully as it did in former years 
and in fact is frequently entirely killed out before it has made any 
material growth. This phenomonon is usually designated as 
"Clover sickness." The difficulty may however be due to a 
number of causes any one of which may make the stand kill out. 
In Europe this clover sickness is thought to be due to the clover 
being grown too frequently upon the same ground. In this 
country however it is apparently usually due to the lack of a 
sufficient amount of humus in the soil. In other words there 
has not been enough in the way of green manures added to the 
soil to make them sufiiciently retentive of moisture to hold the 
clover during the drouths which occasionally occur and which 
prove disasterous to stands of clover upon soils unable to re- 
tain a sufficient supply of moisture. Even though the plants do 
survive they are often in such a non-vigorous condition as to be 
the easy prey of various plant diseases and insect enemies which 
they could otherwise be able to resist. This condition can 
usually be overcome by the addition of humus to the ground in 
suitable form, often as manure or straw. 

The failure of clover to produce as satisfactory stands as 
formerly should be taken as a warning that something is wrong 
with the system of farming operations and that it will only be a 
question of a few years when the other crops will cease to give 
paying returns. Many of the non-productive farms of the 
New England States date the beginning of their downfall from 
the time the soil showed its first inability to longer bring the ac- 
customed stands of clover. This same condition is being met 
with to an increasing extent further and further west and its 
seriousness is one which justifies the most careful attention on 
the part of those interested in the permanent agricultural welfare 
of the country. 



40 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

It has been found that the stand is often lost when sown 
with grain as a nurse crop where as if seeded alone the stand 
will maintain itself satisfactorily. This is due to the fact that 
the maturing grains requires a great deal of moisture and this 
robs the young clover plants leaving the ground about their 
roots dry and baked when the grain is cut. When seeded alone 
the young plants have the entire use of the ground and are much 
better able to make the vigorous growth which will enable them 
to resist the drouth and such enemies as might otherwise over- 
come them entirely. 

Another means of bringing clover back into the rotation is the 
seeding of alsike clover instead of the ordinary red variety, or 
the larger growing Mammoth clover. The alsike clover has been 
found to be able to grow on soils which are slightly too poor in 
humus to render them successful in the production of the red 
clover. The production of alsike should not be kept up indefi- 
nitely as it makes a much less vigorous growth but by its use 
the soil will, with proper treatment soon become able to bring a 
stand of red clover as successfully as in former years. The 
Mammoth Clover is of special importance to the farm largely 
devoted to green manures as the early growth can be clipped or 
pastured and the main crop left for a heavy seed crop and the 
straw then returned to the poorer spots on the field for plowing 
under. 



CHAPTER IX. 



ALFALFA AS A GREEN MANURE. 



ONE ton of green alfalfa contains 1500 pounds of water, 14 
pounds of nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 10 
pounds of Potash, worth $3.45. A ton of dry alfalfa roots is 
worth about $12.50.* 

Under certain conditions alfalfa is valuable as a green manure 
crop. It acts in a manner similar to red clover and other legu- 
minous crops in increasing the yields of the succeeding crops. 

The roots add nitrogen directly to the soil in an available 
form and are also efficient by reason of their deep feeding habit, 
bringing up from the lower layers of soil a good deal of plant food 
which would otherwise be out of reach of the shallow rooting 
crops which follow. The alfalfa hay is so valuable for feeding 
purposes that it is usually only the stubble that is turned under. 
The Wyoming Experiment station found that after five years of 
continuous hay production that the stubble when turned under 
increased the yield of potatoes to the value of $16, oats $16, and 
wheat $8 to $12 per acre. In Colorado and Nebraska the yields 
of corn and other grain crops is often nearly or quite doubled by 
the plowing under of a crop of alfalfa. 

On the limestone soils of the Southern states it is also efficient 
as a soil improver as is evidenced by the experience of a planter 
near Shreveport, Louisiana. A field of alfalfa 11 years old was 
plowed up and put in cotton. The 18 acres produced 23 bales 
averaging 575 pounds each. This same field had been in cotton 
for several years previous to the seeding down with alfalfa and 
had not produced more than 9 bales in any one season. Another 
farmer pastured his hogs for two years on an alfalfa field and 

*In calculating the values of the various fertilizer elements here and in the 
succeeding pages the following values have been assigned : nitrogen 20 cents per 
pound, phosphoric acid 5 cents per pound and potash 5 cents per pound. 



42 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

then put the land in com. He secured 45 bushels of corn on this 
land as compared with only 18 bushels per acre on adjoining 
land not previously in alfalfa. On similar land another farmer 
mowed his alfalfa 2 seasons, pastured it one season, and turned 
it under, securing a yield of 54 bushels of corn per acre. 

Alfalfa is raised in practically all parts of the world. This 
in itself indicates a wide range of adaptability to various climates 
and conditions. So far as the climate is concerned alfalfa can 
be produced in every State in the Union. Special care is neces- 
sary in the humid states however to provide the proper kind of 
soil and treatment. It produces as many as 9 cuttings per year 
below the sea level in Southern California and will make at least 
two crops at altitudes ranging up to 8000 feet in Colorado. 
With proper irrigation it produces wonderful crops in the deserts 
of Arizona which are among the hottest in the world. On the 
other hand the hardier strains are able to withstand the severe 
winters of the north central states. It is raised without irrigation 
in the semi-arid sections of the west where the rainfall may fall 
as low as 14 inches per year, and also in the Gulf Coast States 
where the annual precipitation may rise as high as Q5 inches. 
Although the adaptibility of alfalfa is very great yet in areas not 
climatically suited to its best production special care must be 
taken to provide the right conditions for its successful growth. 

The expense incident to establishing an alfalfa field often 
makes it of doubtful economy to turn under the alfalfa at the 
end of the first or even the second year, unless with the definite 
object of increasing the fertility of the soil for some other crop 
which promises much more profitable returns. In Eastern 
Colorado the soils are lacking somewhat in fertility as regards 
producing successive crops of cantaloupes, potatoes or sugar 
beets indefinitely upon the same land. It is usually impossible to 
secure more than two successive satisfactory crops of these with- 
out the introduction of alfalfa into the rotation for a year or two. 
When the truck crop is removed the land is seeded to fall wheat 
which in turn is followed with oats used as a nurse crop for the 
alfalfa which is seeded with it. The alfalfa makes a moderate 



ALFALFA AS A GREEN MANURE 43 

growth the first season and is turned under at the end of the next 
season to fit the land for two more profitable truck crops. 

Where the initial cost of seeding is not too great the re- 
turns the first summer after early autumn seeding may be 
sufficient to make the crop pay for itself and justify one in turn- 
ing under the stubble and fall growth after three cuttings of hay 
have been secured. In the Eastern States a stand of alfalfa will 
often become choked out with weeds by the end of the third sea- 
son when it is necessary to turn under the crop. 

It is not easy to turn down a stand of alfalfa as the roots 
are large and hard to cut off with the plow. However, in such 
sections as Eastern Colorado where it is a common practice to 
turn under vigorous stands of alfalfa, satisfactory methods have 
been worked out. There it is the usual custom to plow shallow 




Plow with an attachment for cutting the alfalfa roots at 
the outer edge of the succeeding furrow. 

in the fall so as to prevent the crowns from having much of the 
root to draw upon for its growth as a weed the next spring. The 
following Spring a deep plowing is given the land so that the 
succeeding truck crops can be deeply cultivated without the 
alfalfa roots proving troublesome to the cultivator. The plows 
are sometimes provided with a knife attachment on the landside 
of the plow to cut the roots near the outer edge of the next furrow 
where otherwise they would be apt to slide around the side of the 
plow share. The shallow plowing in the fall also serves to ex- 
pose the crown to the action of the weather with the result that a 
far greater percentage of the crowns are winter hilled than would 
be the case were deep plowing practiced in the fall. Again the 
deep plowing in the spring effectually buries the crowns with a 



44 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

small amount of root attached so deeply that the spring growth is 
unable to reach the surface and prove troublesome to the succeed- 
ing crops. 

Alfalfa requires a deep, fertile, well drained, heavily limed 
soil fine on top but compact below. Inoculation is usually pre- 
sent in the western states but must be supplied in the eastern 
states especially when first establishing it on ones place. Failure 
to provide for any one of the above requirements especially in 
the eastern states usually means a failure as in humid sections 
alfalfa is out of its natural habitat and must be handled exactly 
right to enable it to make a sufficiently vigorous growth to over- 
come its many enemies. Alfalfa will not succeed on a poorly 
drained soil nor on one low in fertility or deficient in lime. With 
the possible exception of some parts of the limestone sections all 
soils in the East may be safely considered to require an applica- 
tion of lime for the successful growth of this plant. At least a 
ton of lime is generally required and often more than this is 
necessary on the heavier more acid soils. Ground unburned 
limestone is recommended wherever it can be secured and ap- 
plied at one half the cost of the burned lime. It requires twice 
as much per acre and is somewhat slower in its action but it is 
not thought to have the deleterious effect upon the humus supply 
in the soil that the burned limestone has. However when apply- 
ing lime at the time a green manure crop is being plowed under 
the rapid oxidation of the green plants is usually desirable and 
then the freshly slaked burned lime is probably the most satis- 
factory. Well rotted barnyard manure is a very good form of 
fertilizer for alfalfa as it provides a very favorable medium for 
the growth of the bacteria upon the roots. In the Middle At- 
lantic States, Crimson Clover is probably the most satisfactory 
green manure that can be turned under in preparation for alfalfa. 
In the irrigated sections of the country spring seeding is the rule 
but elsewhere early fall seeding is best. In the Northern States 
late summer seeding is even preferable to early fall seeding as 
this avoids the weeds of mid summer while the frequent harrow- 
ings which should be given the land for six weeks previous to 



ALFALFA AS A GREEN MANURE 45 

seeding will effectually destroy most of the weed seeds which 
rapidly germinate under such conditions. They are thus not a 
source of danger the following season in the alfalfa field. In- 
oculation is usually not necessary in the regular alfalfa districts 
of the Western States but is ordinarily necessary in the East 
where the humid climate and acid soil are apt to check the natural 
spread of the bacteria. 

The rate of seeding varies greatly in the different sections of 
the country. In the Eastern States 30 pounds per acre is usually 
necessary to insure a perfect stand at the hands of the ordinary 
farmer. In the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys 20 pouds is 
the ordinary rule. Under irrigation in thes west 15 pounds is 
usually sufficient. In the semi-arid sections where a thin stand 
is essential from ten to twelve pounds is used while as small a 
seeding as 5 pounds per acre has proved thick enough for satis- 
factory results. If weeds threaten to choke out the young alfalfa 
plants at any time clipping with the cutter bar of the mower set 
high will destroy most of the weeds without harming the alfalfa 
which starts new buds from the base of each shoot. In most 
parts of the Eastern States alfalfa is still in the experimental stage 
and ones first seeding should be made upon a small scale and if 
possible several different treatments given separate parts of this 
experimental tract. In this way the experience which would 
otherwise require several seasons to procure can be obtained at 
the end of the first year. 

Alfalfa should not be sown on ground that is badly in need of 
humus as it requires a fairly good soil to make a satisfactory 
growth. On such soils as are especially low in humus it is better 
to sow some other legume which will build the soil up until it is 
in the proper condition for the reception of the alfalfa. 



CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES. 
COWPEAS. 

ONE ton of green cowpeas contains about 1700 pounds of 
water, 12 pounds of nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid 
and nine pounds of potash. The value of these constituents is 
$3.00 at the valuation given in the chapter on alfalfa. One 
ton of the dry roots contains about $6.00 worth of fertilizing 
materials. The average yield of the green tops is 6 to 12 tons 
per acre. 

The cowpea is used to a greater extent as a soil improver in 
the Southern States than is any other crop. It is a native of 
India but has been grown in this country for nearly one hundred 
and fifty years. Although it is used extensively yet it is not 
being seeded any where near as extensively as it should be in 
light of its wonderful ability to thrive on poor acid soils where it 
is difficult to grow other legumes but where some legume is very 
essential. Its growth is so vigorous that it usually chokes out 
any competing weeds. Inoculation is ordinarily present or at 
least is readily secured. 

The experiments which have been tried out to determine the 
effect of the cowpeas on the fertility of the land have indicated the 
great value of this crop as a green manure. On the poorer so ils 
it is best to turn under the entire crop but on the richer soils the 
hay or at least the seed may be gathered and the remaining por- 
tions of the plant returned to the soil. 

In an experiment performed at the Arkansas Experiment 
Station it was shown that one crop of cowpeas turned under gave 
a yield of 14 bushels of wheat for four successive years thereafter 
as compared with 10 bushels of wheat per acre on the plots not 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS RGEEN MANURES 47 

having had the peas planted upon them and turned under. The 
plots originally in cowpeas also showed some beneficial effect for 
a second series of four years thus making a total of eight years 
over which the effect of the one crop of cow peas could be seen. 
Where only the cowpea stubble was plowed under the average 
yield of wheat for the first four years was a little over twelve and 




Cowpea Vine showing pod and flowers. 



48 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

one half bushels per acre. A comparison was also made as to 
the value of fertilizers on the same series of plots. It was found 
that 800 pounds of complete fertilizer per acre produced an aver- 
age yield of 13 bushels for the four years. The beneficial effect 
of this fertilizer was all observed in the first two years. 

The effect of cowpeas on the yield of a succeeding crop of 
sorghum was determined by the Alabama Experiment Station. 
It was shown that 5.66 tons of sorghum hay was produced 
following cowpea stubble while 5.72 tons per acre was secured 
when the vines also were turned under. Where sorghum had 
been turned under the yield of the succeeding crop of sorghum 
hay was only 3.65 tons per acre. This indicates clearly the value 
of turning under a leguminous rather than a non-leguminous 
crop. It was also found that where millet was turned under the 
yield of oats was only 12.4 bushels per acre as compared with 
22.8 bushels where cowpea vines had been plowed under. 

The South Carolina Experiment Station found that a ton of 
dry cowpea roots and stubble contained 27 pounds of nitrogen, 
5 pounds of phosphoric acid and 17 pounds of potash, a total 
value of $6.50. The entire crop produced fertilizer elements to 
the value of $41.82 as compared with $10.14 for corn and only 
$8.55 for oats. 

These examples might be multiplied but enough have been 
cited to show the value of this crop not only as compared with 
other legumes but also as compared with non-leguminous crops 
which are sometimes plowed under as green manure. 

When cowpeas are being seeded for the purpose of turning 
under as green manure they should be seeded at the rate of about 
60 pounds per acre preferably with a grain drill. When the 
soil is well warmed as in late spring the seed will germinate very 
promptly if the ground is moist. Cowpea seed more than two 
years old is usually practically worthless as it deteriorates very 
rapidly after the second year. 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES 49 

SOY BEANS. 

The soy bean, also called soja bean, came originally from 
southeastern Asia but has long been much cultivated in China, 
India, and Japan. 

One ton of green soy beans contains 1500 pounds of water, 
12 pounds of nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 11 
pounds of potash valued at $3.10. One ton of the dry roots con- 
tains a little over $5.00 worth of fertilizing materials. 

The average yield of the green tops is about six tons per acre. 
The soy bean is similar in many respects to the cowpea. It is 
used to a considerable extent as a soil improver in the Southern 
States and is also grown as far north as Minnesota, Ontario and 
New England. The soy beans are thus adapted to a wider 
range of climate than the cowpeas. They will also succeed 
better than cowpeas on poorly drained soil as well as under con- 
ditions that are too dry for the best production of cowpeas. 
The seed is usually cheaper than that of cowpeas owing to the 
fact that the soy bean seed can be readily harvested by machine- 
ry. It is usually necessary to cultivate the soy beans inasmuch 
as they are not as successful as cowpeas in smothering out the 
weeds which prove troublesome throughout the humid sections 
of the country. 

The Michigan Experiment Station found that inoculated 
soy beans were able to add 38 pounds of nitrogen to the soil 
which was secured from the air. The Arkansas Experiment 
Station used soy beans as green manure and found them to give 
equally as good results as cowpeas, as determined by follow- 
ing them with such crops as oats, wheat, corn or cotton. 
With corn after cow pea stubble the same results were secured 
as after soy bean stubble, while soy bean vines turned under gave 
better results on the succeeding com crop than did the cow- 
pea vines. With oats, however, the results were slightly in favor 
of the cowpeas. 

Soy beans are very well adapted to short rotations taking 
either the entire season for their growth or in case of the early 




Typical soy-bean plant. 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES 51 

maturing varieties requiring but a part of a season following 
some small grain crop. In Tennessee and North Carolina the 
soy bean may be grown between two regular wheat crops without 
the loss of the land for a season. In other parts of the South it 
may be grown between oat crops, especially if the early varieties 
are sued. 

The soy bean is an annual crop, with an erect habit of growth. 
The seed is usually best planted in rows 30 to 36 inches apart so 
that they can be cultivated. The plants should be about two 
inches apart in the row and when seeded thus a bushel of seed 
will plant between two and three acres. If sown broadcast a 
bushel per acre of seed is required. The seed may be sown at 
any time after the soil has become well warmed in the spring. 
The seed should be planted about an inch deep and never more 
than two inches in depth even on sandy soil. The special ad- 
vantage of the soy beans is their marked ability to add nitrogen 
to the soil together with the short period of time necessary for 
their maturity. 

CRIMSON CLOVER. 

Crimson clover is a native of the region north of the Medi- 
terranean and has long been cultivated both as a green manure 
crop and as a forage crop in that section. 

A ton of green crimson clover contains about 1650 pounds 
of water, 10 pounds of nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid, 
7 pounds of potash, valued at approximately $2.50. One ton 
of the dry roots contains about $7.50 worth of fertilizing mater- 
ials. A normal yield of crimson clover is about six tons of green 
hay per acre. This crop is especially adapted as a green manure 
crop and as a cover crop in the Atlantic States from Pennsylvania 
southward. It is easily recognized by its scarlet or crimson 
colored blooms. It is usually seeded in August in the North 
Atlantic States or in September further south either alone or in 
corn. It is especially valuable in that it may be seeded among an 
intertilled crop and will make enough growth in the autumn, 
winter and early spring so that it may be turned under in the 



52 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

spring following the seeding in time for another crop such as 
corn or even cotton in the South Atlantic States. It will not 
succeed on the poorest of soils and a preliminary crop of cowpeas 
turned under is usually necessary in establishing crimson clover 
upon a soil very low in humus and fertilizing elements. By 
the intelligent use of this crop as a green manure, land produc- 
ing only from five to ten bushels of corn per acre has been in- 
creased in fertility so that it will normally produce fifty bushels. 
This may be accomplished without the loss of the use of the land 
for corn single season, by seeding in the corn at the last working 
and turning under the crop the following spring in time for plant- 
ing the corn. Nearly as good results have been obtained by 
cutting a crop of hay when the plants come into bloom and then 
turning under the rather high cut stubble just before planting 
the corn. At the Delaware Experiment Station sweet potatoes 
following crimson clover yielded an increase of 18 bushles per 
acre. This was a gain equal to that on another plot which had 
received an application of 140 pounds of nitrate of soda. At 
the Maryland Experiment Station, potatoes, planted on plowed 
under crimson clover, yielded 72 bushels per acre as compared 
with 53 bushels on a plot not previously seeded to crimson clover. 
In the following year the same plots yielded 102 bushels on 
crimson clover land while that not seeded to crimson clover gave 
only 68 bushels of potatoes per acre. In an experiment with 
corn, following crimson clover, the corn yielded 46 bushels while 
that on land not seeded to crimson clover gave only 39 bushels 
per acre. Crimson clover also makes an ideal crop to turn under 
just before seeding alfalfa as it will grow in land slightly too low 
in humus for the best results for alfalfa and by the larger quanti- 
ties of humus which it adds to the soil does much toward develop- 
ing the ideal conditions required by the alfalfa for its most suc- 
cessful growth. Fifteen pounds of seed per acre is usually re- 
garded as sufficient for obtaining a satisfactory stand. If sown 
in a drought a poor stand often results. It is usually best to 
wait and seed it between showers after the drought is broken 
should such a drought occur at the customary seeding time. 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES 53 

SWEET CLOVER. 

Sweet clover came originally from southwestern Asia but 
has been grown for many centuries in the region surrounding the 
Mediterranean Sea. The yellow species were originally the 
more common but in this country the white species is much more 
widely utilized than are the yellow species. 

A ton of green sweet clover plants contains about 1600 pounds 
of water, 12 pounds of nitrogen, 5 pounds of phosphoric acid, 
13 pounds of potash. The fertilizing constituents above named 
possess a value of $3.30. The yield of green hay of white sweet 
clover varies from 12 to 18 tons per acre. The special value of 
sweet clover as a green manure crop lies in the fact that it will 
grow on many soils which are too poor for the successful growth 
of other leguminous crops. It is extremely useful in improving 
the humus content of soils which are almost devoid of this ma- 
terial. Sweet clover may often be noted growing on steep slopes 
such as railroad cuts or embankments where the conditions are so 
unfavorable that few or no other plants are able to maintain a 
foothold. On the limestone hills of Tennessee, Alabama, and 
Mississippi this crop is very important in that it makes a very 
luxuriant growth upon these soils which usually refuse to produce 
a satisfactory crop of any other plant. After a few years in sweet 
clover, however, these lands prove very fertile and by the use 
of this plant the value of such lands is often more than doubled. 
The Experiment Station in Alabama grew sweet clover on rea- 
sonably fertile land and then seeded the land to corn, obtaining 
28 bushels per acre as compared with 21 bushels per acre where 
cotton had preceded the corn. This increase in yield was not 
the only value to be credited to the sweet clover since the first 
season it produced 2^ tons of hay and the second season 3| tons 
of hay which was readily eaten by stock. In another experi- 
ment, presumably on poorer soil or under less favorable condi- 
tions, corn yielded 23 bushels per acre following sweet clover as 
compared with only 16 bushels on adjoining land where cotton 



54 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

had been produced the season previous. An European Experi- 
ment Station found that the yield of oats when preceded by 
sweet clover was increased 17 bushels per acre. A part of this 
field seeded to potatoes yielded more than double that of and 
adjoining plot not seeded to sweet clover. The Ohio Experi- 
ment Station produced a yield of 27 bushels of corn per acre as 
compared with 19 bushels on similar land not in sweet clover. 
Under natural conditions sweet clover drops its seed in the fall 
and germinates very early the following spring. The first 
season's growth is about thirty inches in height with a very 
large development of fleshy roots. The crown buds on these 
roots develop in the fall and commence growth verj^ early the 
following spring. This crop can be utilized as early pasture and 
then turned under for some late spring seeded crop or it can be 
pastured until July and then allowed to make seed and the straw 
and high cut stubble returned to the land. When seeded under 
field conditions it is necessary that the land be very firmly packed 
as this insures a prompt germination and a much more health- 
ful growth of the plants than is the case on poorly settled ground. 
Many farmers have been successful by seeding the sweet clover 
with oats as a nurse crop. If seeded alone it can be pastured the 
first season without detriment to the plants. It makes a fairly 
good growth when seeded in late summer but does not make sufli- 
cient root growth to make an especially good growth the following 
season. 

BUR CLOVER. 

There are two common species of bur clover in the United 
States, one being the spotted or southern bur clover used in the 
Southern States and the California bur clover. The California 
bur clover is very tender and usually winter-kills except in the 
extreme southern portion of the United States. The spotted 
bur clover is hardy as far north as Tennessee and North Caro- 
lina. Bur clover does best on light, rich soils sCnd may obtain a 
height of 18 inches, yielding as much as 2 tons of hay per acre 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES 55 

or 6 tons of green matter to be plowed under. It may be grown 
even on red clover soils. It is also adapted to growth on Ber- 
muda grass sod and this combination gives almost continuous 
grazing throughout the years as well as furnishing a goodly 
amount of green manure for plowing under. Bur clover should 
be sown in late summer or early fall at the rate of 16 pounds 
of hulled seed per acre or 20 pounds of seed in the bur as it usual- 
ly is in the case of the spotted bur clover. Bur clover reseeds it- 
self readily and is never troublesome as a weed. It possesses 
the further advantage in common with sweet clover of being able 
to inoculate the ground for alfalfa. 

JAPAN CLOVER. 

Japan clover is an annual legume of value principally 
in the Southern States were it makes a good growth. In the 
Middle Atlantic States it usually makes such a low growth 
as to be adapted only for light pasturing on worn out pastures. 
It is of special value in the South owing to its ability to come 
into places of its own accord and improve the nitrogen and 
humus content of the ground. It possesses the same ability 
to increase the yield of succeeding crops as do similar other 
leguminous green manure crops. It produces about five tons of 
green hay per acre. It should be planted at the rate of ten 
to fifteen pounds of seed per acre and harrowed in on reason- 
ably well prepared seedbed in late spring after the soil has 
become well warmed. 

VETCHES. 

The vetches are mostly natives of Europe and western 
Asia but have been grown in this country for many years. 
There are several varieties, the two sorts most generally grown 
are the common vetch which is used as a summer crop in the 
Northern States or winter crop in the South and the hairy 
vetch or sand vetch which can be seeded in the fall even in the 
north and will survive the winter and be ready to turn under the 
following spring. 



56 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 



A ton of the green vetch plants contains about 1650 pounds of 
water, 13 pounds of nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 
about 10 pounds of potash. The above fertilizing constituents 
possess a value of $2.25. One ton of dry vetch roots contain over 
$10.00 worth of fertilizing materials. The vetches ordinarily 
yield about six tons of green plants per acre. 




Hairy Vetch showing flowers. 

Vetches must usually be seeded with some erect growing crop 
such as a small grain in order that the vines may not lodge or 
trail along the ground. The hairy vetch is especially valuable 
owing to its hardiness, its drought resistance , its value as a green 
manure crop and also as a winter cover crop, keeping the land 



MISCELLANEOUS LEGUMES AS GREEN MANURES 57 

from washing when it would otherwise be bare and subject 
to severe winter erosion. About 40 pounds of hairy vetch 
or 60 pounds of common vetch are required to seed an acre. 
When turned under this crop has marked efiFect on the yield of 
the succeeding crop and possesses the advantage of being so 
hardy it can be seeded rather late in the fall and still make 
enough growth for turning under the following spring in time 
for the ordinary cultivated crops. A rolling coulter to cut the 
vines just ahead of the plow facilitates the turning under of the 
vines. 

CANADA FIELD PEAS. 

Canada field peas are grown as a summer crop in the extreme 
northern States and in the mountains of the States farther south. 
It requires rather cool weather for its best growth and for this 
reason is used to some extent as winter hay as well as green 
manure crop in California. 

A ton of green Canada field peas contains about 9 pounds of 
nitrogen, 3 pounds of phosphoric acid, 10 pounds of potash and 
1800 pounds of water. 

Canada field peas yield about five tons of green hay per acre. 
The Ontario Experiment Station grew wheat on three different 
plots upon which green manure crops of Canada field peas, 
rape and buckwheat had just been plowed under. The yield of 
wheat following the Canada field peas was 36 bushels as com- 
pared with 30 bushels following the rape and 27 bushels follow- 
ing buckwheat. 

There are many varieties of field peas among which may be 
mentioned the French Pigeon, Golden Vine, Prussian Blue and 
Canadian Beauty. Canada field peas are sown in the early 
spring in the north or in the autumn in the southern States. 
They are usually mixed with some small grain crop using about a 
bushel of peas to a bushel of grain per acre. If the vines are 
allowed to mature seed it is usually best to pasture them with 



58 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 



hogs until they have eaten up most of the peas and pods as these 
are usually more valuable for pork production than to turn 
under as green manure. After the hogs have finished pasturing 
ojff the peas the vines may be turned under as green manure. 




Canada Pea showing pods. 



CHAPTER XI. 

GREEN CORN AS A GREEN MANURE AND AS A PROTECTION AND 
MULCH FOR WHEAT. 

WE believe that corn along with legumes will take a high 
position among green manures when the best way to use it 
is properly understood. A farmer in Kentucky sowed corn on a 
field of thirty-seven acres, and the result was so favorable that he 
says: "Were my only object the rapid improvement of my soil 
within the shortest space of time, I would not seek further 
or better means than first sowing down thick with rye, which I 
would plough under just before the time of ripening, to prevent 
its seeding the ground, and upon which I would sow one bushel 
and a half of corn per acre, thus in the same season ploughing 
under a heavy coat of rye and corn, which in the short space of 
twelve months will equal, if not surpass, any benefit which can 
be derived from clover in two years." — Cultivator, 1843. 

One more vote in favor of corn I wish to record from a good 
writer and practical farmer. 

S. E. Todd says in his Farmer's Manual: "Some farmers 
contend that clover ploughed under is the cheapest manure 
that can be made. It is a great fertilizer; but I believe that a 
soil can be renovated sooner and at a less expense with Indian 
corn than with clover, because a much larger quantity is turned 
under yearly of corn than of clover. By being expeditious in 
business when a crop of wheat, oats, or barley is taken off in 
July, as they are many times, if the soil is ploughed immediately 
and Indian corn sowed, it will grow large enough in ordinary 
seasons before the autumnal frosts to plough under. But when 
clover is raised no other crop can be grown the same season." 

These are very high recommendations in favor of green corn. 
And are they not true ? Whatever is undoubtedly beneficial as 



60 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

food for animals most certainly will be good manure. Why is 
clover so much better than wheat straw, for animal food ? Be- 
cause it contains more than four times as much nitrogen as the 
straw. And that is the very reason why it is so much better 
for manure. 

Without nitrogenous food we can have no flesh. Without 
nitrogen in the soil we can raise but little food that will make 
flesh. In other words, nitrogen is an absolute monarch who can 
never be dethroned while life exists upon the globe. 

One ton of green corn contains six pounds of nitrogen, two 
and a quarter pounds of phosphoric acid, eight pounds of potash, 
and sixteen hundred pounds of water. The above fertilizing 
material possess a market value of about $1.75. I find by years 
of experience that it is better to plough in two crops of corn in 
one year than one great heavy crop which has grown all the spring 
and summer. 

I have several times turned in from thirty to forty-five tons 
per acre. The great objection to this mode was pointed out to 
me by the ploughman. The surface-roots formed such a dense, 
compact, and tough mass along each furrow that the plough 
could not cut them, and it became necessary to run under them; 
hence the ploughing was much deeper than desired. 

Two crops in a year, each containing in tops and roots about 
twenty tons per acre, will manure the land well. 

Let us compare these with the contents of the barnyard. 
At this rate on twenty acres we may have eight hundred tons of 
green manure. To equal this dressing in nitrogen, phosphoric 
acid, and potash will require about five hundred tons of stable 
manure. And that will cost to buy it at least five or six hundred 
dollars, even if you could find that much for sale anywhere within 
a reasonable distance of the farm. 

Having ploughed in the first crop of corn about the middle 
of July, what shall we do next .'' I will tell you my plan, and if it 
does not meet your full approval do not follow it. Or if doubtful 
of its value, try it on a small plot and you will lose but little if it 
fails. 



GREEN CORN AS A GREEN MANURE 61 

About the first of August, having the land in good condition, 
put in the corn in furrows six or seven feet apart and seven or 
eight grains to the foot. Keep the ground mellow and free from 
weeds with the cultivator while the corn is growing. This 
you ought to do if there was no crop to work in preparing the 
land for wheat. Now, when the time comes to sow wheat you 
will find the sown corn from three to four feet high, according 
to the quality of the soil and the warmth and wetness of the 
season. Then sow the seed between the rows and fluke it in. 

Now mark the result. 

No blasting winds in winter nor in the early spring can injure 
the wheat. The drifting snows will be retained and help to 
shelter it. The soil, powdered by freezing and drying into fine 
dust, will not be blown away. No droughts will check its 
growth. The ground will always be found moist and mellow 
beneath the shelter. Even the rows of corn which may only be a 
foot high will attract the surface-roots of the wheat to banquet 
in the moist and mouldering dust beneath their dense shade. 
And when it decays in the warm days of spring, the rains will 
leach out its soluble elements and saturate the soil with them, 
and do more good to the ripening wheat than the same amount 
of green fodder fed to cattle and the residue returned to the 
field. 

To establish these high claims for Indian com, and the great 
necessity of shelter for winter wheat, I will quote a few words 
from John Johnston, the great apostle of agriculture, whom we 
have already presented as the powerful advocate of surface 
manuring. 

He says: "Wherever the wheat was exposed to the west 
and north-west it is greatly damaged, and I fear considerable of 
it is ruined. I have eighteen acres of Soule's wheat, about five of 
which are sheltered by growing timber from the west and north- 
west. Those five acres look as promising as any wheat I ever 
saw; the other part of the field is weak, and I think cannot make 
a full crop, although much better than much I see around me. 



62 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

The Maryland wheat of which I wrote you was sown immediate- 
ly, east of the orchard. So far as the shelter of the orchard ex- 
tended it looks pretty well; beyond that it is quite feeble. Had 
my orchard been on as high land as the wheat-field, I have no 
doubt it would have sheltered all the wheat-field. 

"I have thought it would pay to plant quick-growing timber 
to shelter fields that are exposed to the west or north-west. We 
have no hard blows from due north or anywhere easterly to in- 
jure crops, but often from the west. It was only three years ago 
that half|of the wheat in the State that was exposed to the north- 
west and west was killed by a hard frost and hard blow on the 
eighth of March. I feel quite sure that it would pay to have 
plantations for shelter wherever winter wheat is the staple crop. 
A top-dressing of manure, or even straw, would have a tendency 
to protect it in such seasons as this has been. This I know. 
One inch of straw put on after sowing the wheat would have 
saved it, I have no doubt; and fine manure would be still better. 
Where the wheat is sheltered by our rail fences it is safe as far as 
that shelter extends, though one would not suppose there was 
much shelter from a rail fence; but it has been enough to protect 
the wheat on that severe day, the 17th of February." — Country 
Gentleman, vol. 23d. 

Probably no man was ever more successful in raising wheat, 
or ever gave the subject a more patient investigation, than 
John Johnston; hence these words will be received as instruc- 
tive truths by all who know his exalted worth. 

The wheat-plant has many enemies. The midge, the mil- 
dew, and the Hessian fly too often nearly ruin it; but according 
to the authority of Lewis Bollman of Indiana, "Freezing out is 
perhaps more destructive to the wheat-crop than all other mis- 
fortunes to which it is incident." — Agricultural Report, 1862. 

S. E. Todd says: "In every wheat-field may be seen in 
spring, plants growing in little hollows sheltered by lumps or 
banks from the cold wind, but enjoying the benefit of the sun's 
rays. The difference between the growth of these plants and 



GREEN CORN AS A GREEN MANURE b3 

others which have not the benefit of shelter is remarkable." — 
Wheat Culturist, p. 212. 

Again he says, on page 226: "The more we can protect the 
wheat-plants from piercing winds and intense cold, the better 
crops of grain we may expect to raise." 

In corroboration of these statements we have seen reports of 
stumps in the Western States saving little patches of wheat all 
over the field. 

Sidney Weller of North Carolina was in the habit of scraping 
up the pine leaves in the forest and covering his wheat in the fall 
with much care and trouble. He says: "By four years' trial I 
have now found it always benefits the wheat — sometimes increas- 
ing the product one-half at least — and even guards the clover 
against the misfortune of burning out in hot, dry summers." — 
Cultivator, 1843. 

What a contrast between the labor of spreading straw or 
pine leaves upon a large field, and the ease and rapidity by 
which you can roll down a luxuriant growth of green corn where 
it grew! 

This method of raising wheat will not prevent you from 
using stable manure as a top-dressing. 

Any time before sowing the wheat, or afterward if you wish 
to do it, you can drive between the rows of corn and spread the 
manure from the wagons. You remember that Gurney says 
that manure does six times more good under a mulch than when 
not covered with anything. 

In the first edition of this work the farmer was advised to 
roll down in the fall the corn which had been planted in drills 
to protect the wheat. Careful experiments since that time have 
proved to my satisfaction that this is not necessary, and that it is 
better to leave the corn standing till spring and then roll it down. 

Since the discovery that drilled wheat is seldom injured by 
freezing, and that careful rolling of light land is another great 
source of protection, it is only in very exposed situations and in 
the Northern and Western States that you will have to resort to 
other means to secure an ample shelter to your fields of grain. 



64 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

It is very probable when planting corn for this purpose that 
it would be better to have the rows wide enough apart, that the 
drill may be used in putting in the wheat. Another point will 
need more careful experiments to work out the right number of 
kernels to the foot; that is, how thick to sow the corn. Would 
it be better to scatter in the furrow fifteen or twenty, or only six 
or eight, grains to the foot in preparing a shelter and protection 
for the crop of wheat? 



CHAPTER XII. 



HUNGARIAN MILLET. 



ONE ton of Hungarian millet in blossom contains about seven 
pounds of nitrogen, two and a half pounds of phosphoric 
acid, nine pounds of potash, and thirteen hundred and sixty 
pounds of water. The above fertilizing constituents are worth 
about two dollars. When the clover-seed which was sown 
among the wheat has failed to grow, you had better seed the field 
in the spring with Hungarian grass; that is, if you intend to alter- 
nate a green and grain crop in succession. 

As soon as all danger is over from frosts sow one bushel per 
acre of the Hungarian seed when the ground is in good and 
mellow condition, and then roll it in. As soon as this crop 
comes in blossom, sow over it a half bushel more of seed per 
acre. Then with your mowing-machine cut it down and leave 
it on the ground. Being cut so early, it will sprout up, and with 
the last sowing you will have two crops growing together, and, 
being shaded by the first, will be equal to it in weight and value. 

These two crops of green manure will make together twenty- 
five tons per acre, and this will amount on a field of twenty acres 
to five hundred tons. Then this green dressing will cost the 
price of the original seed or about ten cents per ton. The ten 
thousand pounds of nitrogen in it will cost less than one cent 
per pound. 

Let us compare this with barnyard manure. It will take 
one thousand tons to furnish as much nitrogen as we have in the 
twenty acres of Hungarian grass. If you can buy the manure 
and haul it home and spread it for one dollar and fifty cents per 
ton, it will cost you fifteen hundred dollars. 

Peruvian guano contains two hundred and eighty pounds of 
nitrogen per ton, and at the old price of sixty dollars it would 



66 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

cost nearly twenty-one hundred and sixty dollars to obtain as 
much nitrogen in that way as we get for sixty dollars in the twenty 
acres of Hungarian grass. 

Nitrate of soda is another highly-concentrated manure, be- 
cause it contains three hundred pounds of nitrogen per ton. But 
I do not know where you can buy the pure article for less than 
ninety dollars for two thousand pounds; therefore, it will cost 
you three thousand dollars to get as much nitrogen as we obtain 
for sixty dollars in twenty acres of green millet. [In 1911 the 
market price of Nitrate of Soda was about $50. per ton. — Ed.] 

After looking at the subject through these calculations, 
•does it not seem exceedingly strange that English, and even 
American, farmers will purchase nitrate of soda and sow from 
one hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds per acre on their 
wheat ? 

Why will they do it.? Because they want available nitro- 
gen. They want it in such a condition that it can be taken up 
by the plants the moment it is sown. Green manures must de- 
cay : a complete decomposition is necessary to convert the nitro- 
gen into nitric acid and ammonia. 

But let us have patience; there never was a pile of hay or 
grain or grass that would not rot down, and in reasonable time 
make manure. 

But how shall we hasten this decay to the best advantage.? 

By keeping the material upon the surface. Dr. Voelcker 
discovered that hay or new -mown grass lost more than half of its 
richest elements when left on the field and exposed to leaching 
rains for a short time. 

Unless the soil is very loose and sandy, vegetable matter will 
not decay when ploughed in as soon as it will upon the surface. 

Combustion is a rapid condition of decay, and the whole 
process of decay is a slow combustion — in both cases a union of 
oxygen with carbon and hydrogen. Cover your fire with ashes 
or earth and it will not burn as brightly as when uncovered. 
Bury half-rotten manure or straw or wood so deep that air will 
be entirebj excluded, and no further decay can take place. This 



HUNGARIAN MILLET 67 

is still further evidenced in peat bogs where the air is naturally 
excluded. Here trees and other plants remain preserved for 
centuries. 

Stirring the soil promotes the slow burning (decay) of the 
vegetable matter in the ground. A pile of clover hay may lie 
for years apparently but little changed by decomposition. But 
a careful examination will disclose the fact that nearly all its 
valuable constituents have been carried into the soil. The shell 
remains, but the oyster has been extracted. 

Minute division favors oxidation. A substance dissolved by 
water and deposited on the soil has its atoms in a state of great 
refinement, and will soon be converted by a chemical change into 
available plant-food. Hence the unquestionable advantages of 
cutting down green crops in midsummer and leaving them to 
cover the ground as long as possible. At the same time another 
green one may be encouraged to grow up through the mulch. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



MORE ABOUT GREEN CLOVER. 



ONE Ion of green clover contains twelve pounds of nitrogen, 
three pounds of phosphoric acid, ten pounds of potash and 
sixteen hundred pounds of water. These fertilizing elements 
have a value of about three dollars. A normal yield is about 
6 tons of green tops per acre valued at about eighteen dollars. 
One ton of the dry roots contains fertilizing materials worth 
approximately $12.50. 

We may by good management have fifteen tons by the middle 
of June to cut down or plough in for wheat. If left on the surface 
as a green dressing, a second crop will grow up, and the two to- 
gether will amount in tops and roots by the middle of August to 
twenty-five tons per acre. That will be five hundred tons on a 
field of twenty acres. This amount of green manure will con- 
tain six thousand pounds of nitrogen. 

One peck of seed per acre, at ten dollars a bushel, will make 
the nitrogen cost less than one cent per pound and the green clov- 
er ten cents per ton. That is fifty dollars for five hunderd tons 
of green manure. 

Now, it will take six hundred tons of barnyard manure to 
furnish as much nitrogen as we get in the twenty acres of clover. 
If you buy stable manure and haul it home and spread it at a cost 
of one dollar and a half per ton, you pay nine hundred dollars 
for a pile that contains no more nitrogen than we can obtain for 
fifty dollars. 

To this you may reply that when we purchase manure it is all 
a clear gain, but that the clover only contains what was already 
in the soil and air. This would be verj-^ plausible reasoning — 
indeed, it would have great weight — ^were it not an established 



MORE ABOUT GREEN CLOVER 69 

fact, as we have already shown, that land does not retain its 
nitrates and other soluble plant food materials, but allows the 
dissolving waters to carry it off almost constantly. 

With this knowledge accepted as a great truth, the careful 
farmer will always employ a trustworthy collector of Nature's 
manurial treasures. Among these he will find by long exper- 
ience that red clover stands in the highest rank. 

It will always be profitable to raise clover in every field on the 
farm whenever other crops will permit it. And whenever the 
crop is not heavy we should assist the land by a free use of bone- 
dust and plaster or super-phosphate of lime. 

Were all the merits of red clover emblazoned in letters of 
gold on a large canvas, it would fail to convey to the mind a 
full estimate of its true value. 

The Hon. George Geddes says: "The agriculture of Onon- 
daga County, New York, is based on the red clover plant. It is 
used for pasture, for hay, and for manure. Strike this plant out 
of existence, and a revolution would follow that would make it 
necessary for us to learn everything anew in regard to cultivating 
our lands." 

Joseph Harris says: "Raise your own clover-seed, and sow 
it with an unsparing hand. You cannot raise too much clover. 
It is the grand renovating crop of America." 

Allen says of clover in his American Farm Book, "It is as a 
fertilizer, however, that it is so decidedly superior to other crops. 
In addition to the advantages before enumerated, the facility 
and economy of its cultivation, the great amount yielded, and 
lastly the convenient form it offers for covering with the plough, 
contribute to place it far above any other species of vegetation 
for this purpose. All the grains and roots do well after clover; 
and wheat especially, which follows it, is more generally free 
from disease than when sown with any other manure. The 
introduction of clover and lime in connection has carried up the 
price of many extensive tracts of land from ten to fifty dollars 
per acre, and has enabled the occupant to raise large crops of 
wheat where he could get only small crops of rye; and it has 



70 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

frequently increased his crop of wheat threefold where it had 
been previously an object of attention." 

In 1843 The Cultivator said: "We know an extensive farmer, 
and a most successful one, who avers that he can manure his 
farm cheaper with clover than he can with manure, could he 
have it for only the carting from his yard and spreading." 

Among experienced farmers a great diversity of opinion exists 
regarding the most profitable way of using clover. Some can 
hardly be induced to plough it in, or anything else which can be 
used as forage; among these we may number Joseph Harris, 
yet even he says: "In certain circumstances it may be better to 
plough under the clover instead of feeding it to stock on the 
farm. It is a quicker way of enriching the soil." — Genesee 
Farmer, 1863. 

Now, is not this a great concession .'' He is such an eloquent 
advocate for feeding every straw that I almost thought if he were 
to see an ox eating his jacket he would give him his coat also! 
Ten years after this was written he speakes still more favor- 
ably upon this subject in Walks and Talks, No. 116: " 'We shall 
have to go back to the old-fashioned plan of ploughing under 
clover,' says the deacon; and, as usual, he is more than half 
right." 

What a great satisfaction it would be to see the strong and 
powerful pen of Joseph Harris engaged in full faith in defence 
of green manuring! 

Here is another example showing how little it cost to enrich 
land with clover: 

D. D. T. Moore sowed clover-seed with barley, and the next 
spring, on the 8th of June, ploughed in the clover for corn. He 
says, to ascertain the weight of the crop of clover thus turned 
under, he cut a square foot of the sod, shook off the soil, and 
found the weight of clover and its roots to be two pounds and a 
quarter. This would give forty-nine tons per acre. 

Hence he obtained five hundred and eighty-eight pounds of 
nitrogen for one dollar and a half, the reported cost of the seed 
per acre! 



MORE ABOUT GREEN CLOVER 71 

Now mark — ^and remember well this astounding fact — that 
we have a green manure which costs but a trifle over three cents 
per ton, and which is more valuable, ton for ton, than stable 
manure! And not a cart nor horse nor fork of any kind was 
required to spread it evenly over the whole field ! 

When I first read this account in the Cultivator for June, 
1854, I was inclined to suppose that there was some error in the 
report. 

That such a mass of clover could grow in less than fourteen 
months, and part of that time in the winter and with barley, 
seemed beyond all common experience. But after this, most 
fortunately, I came across the following careful estimate of the 
amount of vegetable matter which can grow upon an acre, and 
that reconciled me entirely as to the correctness of Mr. Moore's 
statement: 

The Hon. George Geddes says: "Professor Kedzie, of the 
Michigan Agricultural College at Lansing, took a square foot 
of June grass-turf and washed away all the soil in running water, 
and then weighed the roots and surface grass to determine the 
amount of green manurail matter usually contained in a heavy 
green sward, and found it to be five pounds to the square foot, or 
at the rate of more than 100 tons to the acre." 

It certainly is unnecessary to dwell any longer on clover as a 
means of enriching the soil. 

But when and how to use it will require some attention. 

Will it ferment and become sour when turned in in a green 
state.'' Some farmers say it will. 

For thirty years John Johnston ploughed it in about the mid- 
dle of June. How is it that we hear nothing from him about 
souring the soil ? 

The Hon. George Geddes says it is ready to plough in as 
soon as it comes to full maturity. Now, without any exaggera- 
tion we may say that there is not another person in the United 
States who has had such a long and large experience in the use 
of clover as a green manure as this distinguished farmer of New 
York. 



72 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

He writes to the Tribune that he has on his farm in Central 
New York a field which from 1799 to 1873 has had no manure 
except clover grown on it and ploughed under, and that wheat, 
corn, oats, barley, meadow, and pasture have been regularly 
taken from the land in five years' rotation, the closing crop 
being winter wheat, with timothy and clover sowed. The 
clover has been regularly treated with gypsum for fifty years. 
He has particularly noticed it of late years, and says the land is 
more fertile now than it was twenty-three years ago. 

Yet we hear nothing from him of any injury to the soil from 
this lifelong use of clover as a green manure. But such has not 
been the case everywhere. 

Dr. Joseph Henderson of Mifflin Co., Pennsylvania, says: 
"Experience here is adverse to turning down green crops as fertil- 
iz€rs,and few, I believe, have repeated the experiment. In two 
instances in my immediate neighborhood wherein heavy crops of 
clover were ploughed in, in full bloom, upon land of excellent 
quality, the immediate eflFect, at least, was highly pernicious, 
as evidenced in an almost total failure of the succeeding crop 
of wheat." — Agricultural Re-port, 1864. 

Here is another case from the same report : Joshua wS. Keller 
says, "Clover , after growing up a few years, ought to be turned 
under when fully ripe with a good plough. Let those who advo- 
cate the green state do so to their hearts' content. I have the 
experience of both the dead -ripe and the young green, and would 
by no means suffer the latter if I could prevent it." 

And here is another from an able writer whose name I have 
forgotten : "But powerful as are the effects of green crops plough- 
ed in, it is the experience of some practical men that one crop 
allowed to perfect itself and then die where it grew, and then 
turned in dry, is superior to three turned in gieen." 

What can be the cause of this .^ The crop that is left to ripen 
and fall where it grew, shades, protects, and mulches the soil. 
And it may be that half its substance is leached out and enriches 
the surface with liquid manure. 




Sweet Clover showing flowers. 



74 FABMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

If this is the case, certainly no better way could be adopted 
to use clover to improve the land. Yet I would modify this treat- 
ment by following the device of Joseph Harris, that is, to cut 
down the clover when in full bloom, and let the second crop grow 
up through it, and also cut the second when ready, and let 
decay a while before ploughing for wheat. 

This mode would effectually head off all weeds that might be 
among the clover. But with regard to the crop becoming sour 
if turned in green, that is another matter. If you are careful 
to plough in the green dressing very shallow, and the soil is 
mellow and loamy, there will be little danger from acid fermen- 
tation. If you are afraid of it, sow lime over it before ploughing, 
and that will prevent it and be a benefit to the wheat. 

Clover has but one fault. In its infancy it is very tender and 
feeble, and cannot always stand the atmospheric changes. It 
may be that we are to blame. We may not know when to sow 
the seed to ensure a perfect germination. One farmer will 
tell you to sow very early, even on the last fall of snow; another 
will say. Wait till May; and some will declare that they never fail 
when they sow in June. Yet failures will take place. 

In 1870, Joseph Harris writes: "Nearly all the spring-sown 
timothy and clover in this section is a comparative failure, and 
farmers are ploughing their wheat-stubble and going to sow 
wheat again." 

He sowed about fifty acres, and says: "It is apparently an 
absolute failure." 

In 1872, Mr. Straub of Maryland wrote to Harris that "for 
the last two years the clover crop has proved almost a total 
failure." 

This is a serious matter, because it is always a double loss: 
you lose a crop of clover and all the money invested in the seed. 

Have we no remedy? There is but one cause for all this 
trouble — the want of moisture in the surface soil. 

Sidney Weller of North Carolina found that when he covered 
his wheat with pine leaves, even on his sandy soil, the clover 



MORE ABOUT GREEN CLOVER 75 

never failed, no matter whether he sowed the seed in the fall or 
in the spring. 

When the wheat is protected with green corn, as recommend- 
ed in Chapter XI, the clover will find a moist bed to grow in all 
the year. 

If you wish to raise clover independent of any other crop, 
sow it with buckwheat in the spring, and when the buckwheat 
is in blossom cut it down, and it will mulch the clover and 
ensure a good crop. 



CHAPTER XIV 



GREEN RYE. 



ONE ton of green rye contains nine pounds of nitrogen, 
five pounds of phosphoric acid, fourteen pounds of potash, 
and fourteen hundred pounds of water, worth approximately 
$?.75. 

When we compare it with barnyard manure its great value 
as a gTeen dressing becomes apparent. I have seen fifteen tons 
per acre growing on the 8th of May, and tliis was ascertained by 
careful measurement. Then on a field of twenty acres you 
could have three hundred tons of manure at very little expense, 
all evenly spread on the ground and ready to plough in. 

The most careful analysis is worth nothing if green rye is 
not equal, ton for ton, to stable manure, with one small excep- 
tion. The latter has half a pound of phosphoric acid per ton 
more than the former. 

Now, what will it cost you to cover a field of twenty acres 
with three hundred tons of manure .f* Can buy it, haul it, and 
preads it for less than four hundred and fifty dollars ? 

The rye will cost you for the seed one dollar jjer bushel, and 
two bushels per acre will be forty dollars. That is, it will cost 
more than twelve times as much to improve with barnyard 
manure, at one dollar and a half per ton, than to use green rye. 

The tillage always pays for itself. 

And remember this: the rye grows at a time when you cannot 
use tlie ground for any other crop but wheat. 

Mr. Root of Illinois regards this fact of the very highest im- 
}>ortance in using this grain as a green manure. 

Besides this great merit, it protects the field from washing 
during the winter. 

It absorbs the soluble minerals and the ammonia and nitric 
acid that might under other conditions be lost. 



GREEN RYE 77 

For barnyard manure you can claim no superiority over this 
plant but its partial decomposition. It is more immediately 
available, because a part of it is oxidized. 

The rje must undergo this change before its albuminoids 
can be of use to growing vegetation. But look at the ample 
time that it has to decompose, and then you cannot but acknowl- 
edge its value. 

It may be ploughed in for a crop of corn, or may be cut down 
just as it blossoms and left as a mulch on the ground. A second 
crop will then grow up nearly as large as the first, and may then 
be ploughed in, and Hungarian grass or white mustard or buck- 
wheat or green corn be sown, and make a third crop for turning 
in for wheat. If corn should be the third crop, I should prefer 
to use it as a mulch, as already explained in Chapter XI. 

J. B. Root of Rockford, 111., writes in the American Agri- 
culturist, 1875: "The labor of applying evenly forty loads of 
manure per acre is considerable. All this is done more evenly 
by the green crop. Seed and labor together cost me but three 
dollars and a half per acre. I cannot say that it adds as much 
fertility to the soil as forty loads of manure, but I do say that in 
our droughty seasons it produces as great an increase of crop 
as do forty two-horse loads of good manure. It certainly pays 
to practise it, and to practise it largely, even on the land well 
supplied with stable manure." 

Every one acquainted with the writings of Joseph Harris 
for the last twenty-five years will suppose, of course, that clover 
is the only green crop which could obtain such a high recommen- 
dation from a practical farmer. 

But such is not the case. Mr. Root makes but little use of it. 
He says: "Rye has been my most profitable green manure." 

Harris thought it just as useless to plough in cereal crops for 
manure as to attempt to carry buttermilk in a basket. He be- 
lieved they spilled the most of their nitrogen while growing. He 
has now changed his views, and is conscientious enough to 
acknowledge that for twenty-five years he was in error. 



78 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

He now writes: "I thought then that wheat, barley, oats, 
corn, and other cereals during their growth gave off nitrogen into 
the atmosphere, while clover, peas, beans, vetches, and turnips 
retained all the nitrogen they got from the soil and from dews 
and rains. The theory was simple and plausible, and the 
practical deduction safe and sound. But more recent investiga- 
tions failed to sustain this view." [The clover, peas, etc., do 
obtain nitrogen from the air via the tubercles on their roots and 
therefore, as nitrate conservers and formers they excel the cereals. 
Ed.] 



CHAPTER XV. 



GREEN BUCKWHEAT. 



ONE ton of green buckwheat contains about 1675 pounds of 
water, eight pounds of nitrogen, two pounds of phosphoric 
acid and six pounds of potash, worth about $2.00 

It stands very high as a green manure. Two large crops can 
be raised in one year to plough in for wheat. In 1875 I raised 
in fifty-one days twenty-seven tons per acre of green buckwheat. 
It was sown on the 14th of July, and cut and weighed on the 3d 
of September. 

Besides its value as a manure, it is of some value as hay. 
In July you should make an estimate of the forage on hand to 
keep the stock through the winter, and if you need more, in- 
stead of cutting a second crop of clover, better sow one or more 
acres of buckwheat and top dress it with lime and bone-dust or 
super-phosphate, unless the land is already good; and before the 
equinoctial storms of September you may have from the buck- 
wheat three or four tons of good hay per acre. It contains two- 
thirds as much nitrogen, and phosphoric acid and potash per ton 
as does red clover hay. 

If wet weather should prevent you from making it into hay, 
you can plough it in for wheat, and no loss will occur. 

Even buckwheat straw, after you have thrashed out the grain, 
should be saved for hay. It contains four times as much nitro- 
gen, four times as much potash, and three times as much phos- 
phoric acid, as wheat straw. 

John Johnston once said to Harris: "I should have made 
more money if I had found out the value of straw for fodder fift- 
teen years earlier." 

He alludes, of course, to the straw from his immense crops 
of wheat. 



80 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

No wonder farmers cannot raise com after buckwheat, when 
seed and straw have all been removed ! They say it poisons the 
land. So does a check on the bank when it removes all your 
deposits. But plough the money into the bank, and it will 
antidote all the poison. 

That buckwheat is beneficial as a greert dressing the follow- 
ing may be relied upon : 

"We cannot," says the editor of the Theatre of Agriculture, 
"too much recommend, after our old and constant practice, the 
employment of this precious plant as a manure. It is certainly 
the most economical and convenient the farmer can employ." 

The American Agriculturist for 1867, p. 253, says of buck- 
wheat: "It affords one of the most valuable green manure crops 
to be used on light leachy lands, for with 100 to 150 pounds of 
good guano, or three to five hundredweight of bone-dust, a heavy 
crop of manure may be produced on almost any soil." 

It also says, on p. 285: "When this grain is sowed the 1st 
of August it will be in condition to plough in for a rye crop the 
last of September. We have seen rye taken from a field four 
years in succession, with no other manure than buckwheat 
turned in at the time of soiNing the rye. There was a constant 
increase in the yield of the grain, showing the benefit of the green 
crop." 

Here we see what a number of green crops may be turned in 
for wheat every other year. Of one fact we may be certain — 
that no person ever made money by raising small crops of wheat. 
Hence every effort should be made to prepare the ground and 
enrich it, so as to ensure a large crop of grain. The cheapest 
and best way to accomplish this is to plough in three or four green 
crops in one year for wheat. And in this way it may be done: 
Where the clover has failed, as soon as the wheat is off in July 
plough and sow rye and buckwheat together. When the latter 
is in full blossom cut it down on the rye. Here we have two 
crops on the field all winter. One acts as a mulch to the other, 
and both together protect and improve the soil. By the middle 
of May the rye will be in blossom, and should be carefully cut 



GREEN BUCKWHEAT 81 

down, and then a second will spring up, and in six or eight weeks 
may be as large as the first. Then plough all in together, and 
by the first of August put in sowed com as a mulch for wheat, 
as directed in Chapter XI. 

Take notice of this remarkable fact — that we have four green 
crops, and the wheat actually put in the ground, with only two 
ploughings. 

If your soil should be a heavy clay, and you wish to plough it 
three times, the rye may be turned in about the middle of May, 
and Hungarian grass or some other quick-growing plant be sown 
for the third crop. 

To conclude this subject, let us examine the relative value of 
green buckwheat compared with barnyard manure. In the 
three crops which you can plough in between two crops of wheat 
it will be safe to estimate them all together at forty-five tons per 
acre. 

Then on a field of twenty acres you will have 900 tons, con- 
taining 7200 pounds of nitrogen, 1700 pounds of phosphoric 
add, and 9900 pounds of potash. Now, it will take 720 tons 
of stable manure to yield as much nitrogen as we get in our 
triple crop of buckwheat, and nearly as much for the phosphoric 
acid and potash. If the last crop of buckwheat should absorb 
any material from the mouldering ruins of the first, it may be 
possible that we only gain from the soil about two-thirds of the 
amount above given. But that will be amply sufficient for a 
good crop of wheat. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



BARNYARD MANURE. 



/^NE ton of average barnyard manure piled in the open and 
well rotted contains about ten pounds of nitrogen, seven 
pounds of phosphoric acid, five pounds of potash, and 1500 pounds 
of water. At ordinary prices a ton of such manure is worth about 
two dollars and fifty cents. If piled in a covered barn, it is 
worth three dollars and a half a ton since much of its potash and 
considerable of its nitrogen is lost by leaching if the manure is 
not covered. 

It may be that you live so near to some town or city that 
you can get manure for one dollar and a half per ton, and can 
haul it home and spread it for fifty cents a load. 

Now, as we have more faith in clover than in any other green 
manure, let us compare these two together. You must put 360 
tons of manure on the twenty acres to get as much nitrogen as 
we have in the single crop of clover. That will cost you $540 
for the manure, and that will be nearly twenty cents per pound 
for the nitrogen. I say "nearly," for we must allow something 
for the minerals. But how much? Harris says that "all the 
mineral matter in a ton of barnyard manure could be purchased 
for twenty-five cents." 

This is too low an estimate for manure that has never been 
leached by rain, but may apply very well to any that has been 
exposed to the weather all summer and has lost by drainage 
nearly all its soluble elements. 

Great care should be observed in purchasing manure. Its 
value depends entirely on the kind of material of which it is 
made and the care bestowed upon it afterward. If it has lain 
in a dry place, and become fire-fanged and white and mouldy, 
and so light that it feels on your fork like a bunch of dry leaves, 



BARNYARD MANURE 83 

it is hardly worth hauHng home at any price; and if it is made of 
nothing but straw, although it may look well, do not pay much 
for it. 

But if preserved in a cellar or covered yard, and been kept 
moist with urine or drainage from the yard while rotting, and the 
animals while making it have been fed two or three times a day 
on grain or bran or oil-cake and good hay, and the pile is well 
concentrated by decay, then it is good manure and worth haul- 
ing several miles to your home. 

On my Farm I have all the liquid which settles in a 
tank at the lowest corner of the yard pumped up and sprinkled 
over the manure under cover, and the process of decomposition 
goes on so regularly that it could not be made better any other 
way. Yet with all the care we can bestow upon it, it seems al- 
most impossible to save all the liquid in the stables. 

Barns are not ordinarily properly constructed for this pur- 
pose. Stalls should be eight or ten feet high from the floor 
to the joists above, so that three feet deep of manure may be left 
under the animals all the time. And when the stables will 
hold no more they may be cleaned out to the bottom, and then 
re-bedded with one foot of sods and turf, and a light coat of straw 
or any kind of litter over them. This way is nearly as good, and 
not so costly, as gutters behind the stalls to carry off the urine. 

When in search of manure in the village or town near you, 
the most important question is not what kind of animals produce 
it, but how much and what kind of feed has been given to them. 
Joseph Harris says that one bushel of Indian corn will make 
twenty cents' worth of manure. And Lawes considers the resi- 
due from one ton of clover hay worth over nine dollar^. 

Now, when you find a pile under cover, and a reliable man 
assures you that it was made by feeding 200 bushels of corn and 
ten tons of clover hay, with a moderate amount of straw for bedd- 
ing, then you may safely offer him two dollars per ton for it. 

It will not do to buy everything that is called manure. Let 
me give you an example that is worth remembering. 



84 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Col. Waring of Ogden Farm says : "As I drive along the road 
I daily meet able-bodied men crawling along beside snail-like 
ox-teams with loads of stained straw from the private stables in 
which the summer residents of Newport keep their horses 'up 
to their knees' in litter. The cart holds about a cord of the 
stuff (128 cubic feet) , for which five dollars or more have been 
paid in town, and to get which occupies the best part of a day's 
labor of man and team." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

GROUND UNBURNED LIMESTONE VS. BURNED LIME 
FOR GREEN MANURES. 

THERE are two reasons why attention must be given to the 
application of lime or ground unburned limestone to soils 
upon which green manuring crops are grown for the purpose of 
soil improvement. In the first place most legumes make a much 
more vigorous growth if there be an abundance of lime in the soil . 
This is due partially to the fact that the legumes themselves re- 
quire a great deal of lime to build up their tissues and also to the 
fact that the nitrogen gathering organisms which exist in the 
tubercles on the roots of these green manure plants giow much 
more vigorously in the presence of lime in the soil than when this 
mineral is absent. The second reason for the use of lime or 
ground limestone is, that when a green manuring crop is turned 
under, acids are generated by the decay of the green plants and 
this tends to make the soil sour. It, however, lime be scattered 
over the field in advance of plowing the lime will be ready at the 
bottom of the old furrow to counteract or neutralize any acidity 
which may be developed; in this way the soil may be kept in its 
original sweet condition instead of becoming sour and unfavor- 
able in this respect for the growth of many of the ordinary 
farm crops. 

Lime or ground limestone is of special value in the soil in that 
any acids will combine with the lime or limestone liberating the 
harmless carbon dioxid and forming an ordinarily harmless 
compound which is eitlier leached out of the soil or is taken up 
by the growing plants and utilized by them. Red clover, alfalfa 
and sweet clover usually require considerable amount of lime 
in the soil. Co^vpeas will grow on soils which are too acid for 
the growth of such legumes as those just mentioned. There has 
been considerable discussion as to the proper form of lime that 



86 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

should be applied to the land. There are three different kinds 
of lime that are used to a greater or less extent. These are (1) 
burned lime or quick lime (2) slaked or hydrated lime and (3) 
ordinary limestone or lime carbonate, consisting of the ground 
unburned limestone with no further treatment. Gypsum or 
land plaster has occasionally been classed as lime but this has 
practically no value in neutralizing soil acidity. The former 
extensive use of this land plaster especially on clover and other 
legumes has largely given way in favor of the use of the forms of 
lime just referred to. There soon comes a time when a soil will 
cease to respond favorably to applications of land plaster. This 
condition is quite prevalent throughout the eastern State. 

Unslaked lime is the most concentrated form in which it is 
possible to purchase it, that is, a ton of burned unslaked lime 
will neutralize more acidity than the same quantity in any other 
form. The reason for this is that the burning drives off all the 
carbon dioxid, leaving only the active principle of the lime 
remaining. The advantage accuring to the use of lime in this 
form is that being concentrated it can be transported at a less 
relative cost, as when the other forms are used one has to pay 
freight charges on the water in the hydrate of lime and in the 
carbonate or ground limestone. Hydrate of lime is made by 
adding water to the quick lime. This puts the lime in a very 
convenient form to handle as it is very finely pulverized and runs 
through a drill very readily. The cost of the lime in this form, 
however, is usually considerably in access of that asked for the 
freshly burned lime even though it requires over 2600 pounds 
of the hydrated lime to do the same work that is done by 2000 
pounds of the quick lime. If the ground limestone is used it 
must be held in mind that about one-half of the constituents of 
the ground limestone are of no use as far as neutralizing soil 
acidity is concerned. Fifty-six pounds of freshly burned lime 
will do the same work in the soil as a hundred pounds of ground 
limestone. The very finely divided condition of the freshly 
burned lime when applied to the ground and allowed to slake 
permits it to do its work much more quickly than is the case 



GROUND UNBUKNED LIMESTONE VS. BURNED LIME 87 

with the ground limestone. Figured on the same basis as the 
hydrate of Hme it will require 3600 pounds of carbonate to 
neutralize the same amount of soil acidity as will be accomplished 
by 2000 pounds of the freshly burned lime. These points must 
be taken into consideration in figuring the cost of freight and 
hauling the lime together with the price that one has to pay for 
the lime in these different forms. If one can obtain the ground 
limestone for $2.75 per ton he can afford to pay $3.75 for slaked 
lime and $5.00 per ton for quick lime. The expense of hauling 
the carbonate of lime is usually more than that of either the hy- 
drated or the freshly burned lime owing to its greater weight for a 
given amount of effectiveness. The points in which the ground 
limestone differs from the freshly burned lime is that it does not 
induce such rapid bacterial action in the soil, it may be stored 
without detriment, and is easy to handle not being in the caustic 
form. Its disadvantages lie in its increased weight and rather 
slow effect upon the soil in overcoming its acidity. The points 
in which the caustic lime differs from the ground limestone are 
as follows. It is more active owing to its finely divided condi- 
tions and caustic properties. It has more favorable action on 
heavy clay land than does the ground limestone. 

While it is possible to apply too much caustic lime it is 
practically impossible to apply so much of the ground limestone 
as to injure the soil or growing crops. In Illinois one plot of 
ground was treated with ground limestone at the rate of 100 
pounds per acre without any detriment to the growing plants. 
This is an important point to be considered especially when the 
ground is supporting tender vegetation and requires liming. 
The farmers of Illinois have been able to obtain ground limes- 
stone at from $1.00 to $1.25 per ton delivered at their freight 
station. This has been accomplished only by their creating a 
demand for the same in sufficient number of carload lots as to 
enable the manufacturers to make the carload the unit of sale 
rather than the ton. At these rates one can afford the slight in- 
crease in freight charges and cost of scattering upon the land and 



88 FARMING \»aTH GREEN MANURES 

it is probable that in the end the results will be much less hann- 
ful to the land than is repeated applications of the burned, 
slaked lime which has a greater tendency to deplete the humus 
content of the soil. The burned lime should always be water 
slaked before being applied. This is usually accomplished by 
piling it in small piles over the field before spreading it. 

Except for the convenience of handling and storing, the pur- 
chase of hydrated lime (water slaked lime) is seldom to be recom- 
mended as the price is usually greater than the much more con- 
centrated burned lime. 

In applying lime at any time to green manure crops it is recom- 
mended that at least one-half of the lime be applied before turn- 
ing under the crop. This will insure the lime being present in 
that part of the ground where the greatest acidity will develop 
owing to the decay of the green material. 



CHAPTER XVni. 

FORAGE FOE THE HORSES ON THE GREEN MANURE FARM. 

WHEN we have concluded to use green crops for manure, 
of course we should leave all the clover and all other 
vegetation stand for this purpose, and cut as little as possible 
to feed to animals. 

It will not do to take the clover or the Hungarian grass or 
the sowed corn from the fields intended for wheat. 

We should have a clear understanding of the amount of forage 
which our stock will need, and then make ample provision 
for them. 

What is the experience of the best farmers upon this subject ? 

Colman writes in his European Agriculture, "It is estimated 
by many intelligent farmers in England that the horse-teams re- 
quire for their maintenance full one-fourth of the produce of the 
soil." 

Again he says: "Indeed, so far as my observation goes, 
there is no single source of expense, none which abstracts so 
much from the profits of farming, and none of which the farmers 
in general are so little aware, as that of horse-teams." 

Alderman Mechi says: "This brings me to the fearful ques- 
tion: What portion of the acreage of this kingdom do farm- 
horses consume ? I answer, Nearly one-fourth of all the arable 
land in the kingdom." 

This is a very discouraging picture — that one-fourth of all 
you raise will be devoured by the horses which are required to 
work the farm! 

Is there no way to remedy this ? Certainly there is a way. 
We must raise enormous crops of forage; nothing else can save 
us from this great expense. 



90 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Joseph Harris, speaking of John Johnston, says: "Last sum- 
mer he wrote me that he had raised a great crop of timothy, but 
that the story was too big to tell. I asked him about it yesterday. 
He top-dressed a piece of timothy grass with a compost of hen 
droppings, chip manure, and cow dung. The timothy was 
nearly six feet high and as thick as wheat straw, with heads al- 
most a foot long. He weighed several of the cocks and esti- 
mated the crop at five tons to the acre!" 

In 1860 a friend of mine cut and weighed and sold to his 
neighbors nine tons and a half of timothy and clover hay from a 
two-acre lot which had been manured from his slaughter-house. 

We should learn two useful lessons from these examples : 

First, that top dressing is all that is required to ensure a big 
crop of timothy; and second, that a little land can be made rich 
enough to furnish us with all the hay needed on the farm. Hay 
from Hungarian grass has few equals when well made. 

"A correspondent of the Prairie Farmer, Mr. Philips of Butler 
County, states that the premium acre at the last fair of that coun- 
ty yielded eight tons and two hundred pounds of well-cured 
hay." — Cultivator. 

Colman says of millet: "I wish my countrymen were more 
impressed with the extraordinary value of this plant. I know few 
plants which make a more abundant return, or which, when 
it is well cured, give a more nutritious forage or one more relished 
by stock." 

In 1854, Lawes and Gilbert sowed some clover-seed in a rich 
garden. They say : "The estimated total amount of green clover 
obtained from this garden soil in six years, without further man- 
ure, is about 126 tons per acre, equal to about twenty-six and a 
half tons of hay. 

"Fourteen cuttings have been taken without any re-sowing of 
seed." 

Why was no re-seeding required during the six years .'^ It 
was either because the soil was so very rich, or because it was 
cut so often and so early that no seed could mature; and it may 
be the nature of clover to live on till seeds are developed. 



FORAGE FOR HORSES ON THE GREEN MANURE FARM 91 

Besides the plants above mentioned, I advise you to have one, 
two, or three acres of orchard grass, and to use every available 
means to make the land very rich. It will be ready the first of 
all to mow in the spring. By top dressing it in the fall or very 
early in the spring it will never fail, never run out. 

All the plants above mentioned have peculiar merits of their 
own; hence the great advantage of having a patch of each near 
the barn, for summer soiling as well as for winter forage. 

It is said that the Hungarian is "so deep-rooted that severe 
drought does not affect it in the least, and it may be sown upon 
the highest and driest soils without fear of failure," and that it 
will yield, when kept for seed, twenty to thirty bushels per acre. 
Hence, the seed need not cost more than fifty cents to a dollar 
per bushel. 

Let me say a few words about making hay. It has been 
found that untimely rains may leach out of hay while being made 
nearly one-half of its best material. 

Therefore, how very unwise to cut grass in rainy weather, as 
many do to be ready to make hay when it clears up ! Far better 
to mow on a clear morning, and put it up in well-made cocks 
in the evening should there be any appearance of rain; then it 
will be comparatively safe. Should even a heavy shower come, 
all that can fall on each cock cannot leach through it, and hence 
little damage will be done. 

Another arrangement is worthy of your attention. Have 
your permanent hay-field as near the barn as possible, and then 
you can haul in two loads in less time than you could go to the 
back field for one load. This is a matter of the highest impor- 
tance in stormy weather. 

One or more acres of sowed corn will make an excellent 
addition to the winter provender, provided you need any. 

A brief notice of what others have accomplished with it, 
I think will be acceptable. 

David Miller of Fayette Co., Pa., writes to the Cultivator 
in 1842: 'T have generally had from about sixty to seventy tons 



92 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

of green food to the acre, and think it decidedly better than grass 
for either beef or milk." 

H. L. Ellsworth, Esq., says: "I sowed four and a half bushels 
of common corn per acre broadcast, and harrowed in the same. 
Having soaked the corn in saltpetre, it took a rapid start, over- 
topped the weeds, and covered the ground with a forest of stallcs. 
Being anxious to ascertain the quantity, I measured a few squai* 
feet of the stoutest. I found I had five pounds of green fodder 
per square foot — that is, IO85 tons per acre. I cut the first crop 
the early part of July, and ploughed and sowed the land again, 
and took a second crop two-thirds as large." — Cultivator, 1842. 

Here we have 172 tons of green fodder per acre in one year. 
Of course this large amount of provender could only be obtained 
on rich land. 

Mr, Peters says: "The amount of corn-fodder which will 
grow upon an acre is truly fabulous, and no one will believe it 
until they have had occular demonstration. It is not a very 
large thing to grow 200 tons of green fodder to the acre. I 
think it possible to grow 250 tons with care and a good season." — 
Genesee Farmer, 1865. 

"Gustavus Harmoir, president of the Agricultural College 
of Valenciennes, has been experimenting with Indian corn as a 
soiling crop. The variety used was the 'giant maize of Cara- 
qua.' The seed was drilled May 31st in rows about three feet 
apart and eighteen inches in the drill. By the 16th of August 
the stalks were fourteen feet high, and the yield was over 450 tons 
per acre." — Genesee Farmer, 1863. 

We have no higher authority on the value of green corn as a 
food for cows than Col, Waring of Ogden Farm, and so perfectly 
is he satisfied with it that he exclaims in the American Agricul- 
turist, "Corn never! corn-fodder always!" 

Again he says: "Throughout nearly the whole country there 
is no crop that can at all compare, when we consider both its 
value, pound for pound, and the enormous yield that may be 
obtained from an acre with corn-fodder, AVhether the purpose 
be to make butter, cheese, or beef, or to keep young stock in 



FORAGE FOR HORSES ON THE GREEN MANURE FARM 95 

thrifty growing condition, it is at once most profitable and 
nutritious." 

Colman, in estimating the value of different kinds of forage, 
says: "I have some doubts, however, whether for the purpose of 
soiling, for milk, or for fattening any prx)duct can be found equal 
to that of Indian corn cut green." — European Agriculture. 

It is said that if we sow forty to fifty grains to the foot in 
drills three feet apart we will have one-third more fodder than 
with twenty grains to the foot. I have raised it for more than 
ten years on my Farm, and for winter fodder I prefer 
about six stalks to the foot, because it will then grow eight and 
ten feet high, and can be cut when ready, independent or all 
weather, and put in shock, and will stand well till November, 
when it may be put in the barn. 

For feeding through the summer to horses, cows, and pigs, 
I care not how thick it is planted even fifty grains to the foot will 
be better than any less amount. But you will find this much 
more troublesome to save for winter provender, because you will 
have to cure it in the same way that you make hay, and may 
be very much annoyed with wet weather. 

To conclude, remember the great secret of success in agricul- 
ture is the concentration of manure and labor. A poor soil with 
little labor, little tillage, and no manure will never produce a 
large crop of green corn or any other kind of forage. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

LOSS OF LIQUID MANURE. 



WHILE making vast piles of manure by feeding grain 
and green crops, are you able to save all the residue ? 

Certainly not; that would be impossible. 

How much of it do you lose ? 

Alderman Mechi declares: "Upon a careful investigation 
we safely assert that twenty per cent, of ordinary farmyard man- 
ure is wasted. An examination of ten farm-homesteads, con- 
secutively taken, has fully established this supposition." 

Manure is the farmer's capital. What business can be 
carried on with profit if you are obliged to borrow money at an 
interest of twenty per cent? And if you lose twenty per cent, 
of your capital every year, where is the difference between you 
and the reckless borrower? 

Does Mechi save all the manure ? Yes — we may say all of it. 
It is made over water-tight troughs, and is carefully washed into a 
great tank, from which it is pumped by a steam-engine through 
three-inch iron pipes over all the farm. But this is not all he 
saves by the operation. 

It will cost you at least fifty cents a ton to haul and spread the 
contents of the barnyard on any distant field. It costs him but 
four cents per ton to spread in a liquid form all the manure he 
makes. Hence his profit as a farmer on all his great invest- 
ments is fifteen to eighteen per cent. He very truly says, "It is 
the filling, carting, turning over, refilling, carting, and spreading, 
and wasting, that run away with the farmer's profit." 

He has abandoned green manuring, which he once followed 
extensively. In fact, his great outlay will not justify it now, 
even if he wished to do it. 



LOSS OF LIQUID MANURE 95 

Notwithstanding all this, he says: "If stock is too dear, 
or you are short of capital, plough in green and root crops, 
particularly on heavy land." 

So much for England's model farmer. Now for the greatest 
light in our own country. 

John Johnston says: "I have suffered an immense loss from 
the liquids running from my barnyards, but I never could con- 
trive a plan to prevent it." — Cultivator, 1861. 

Probably no man ever estimated manure nearer its true value, 
or ever had a more striking experience of its power, than John 
Johnston; and how passing strange it is that even he, with all 
his wisdom and ability, could not save the whole of it! 

It is an established fact that the liquid is the most valuable 
portion of the manure. 

Joseph Harris, in alluding to its great waste, says in Walks 
and Talks, No. 49: "As ordinarily managed, however, the 
liquid either runs away or soaks through the crevices of the 
planks into the ground, and is lost." 

The American Agriculturist, 1872, says: "The value of liquid 
manures is not sufficiently realized. It is safe to say that not 
one-thousandth part of this is ever saved for use, but nearly the 
whole is allowed to go to waste." 

There is a way of saving the urine which should not be over- 
looked. Erect a temporary fence around a piece of ground 
which you can till, and keep your animals on it. Let them re- 
main there till the cold weather obliges you to put them in the 
barn. You can keep the cattle there all the time, if the lot is 
large enough to require all their manure, during the warm sea- 
son, or you may let them pasture in the field by day and feed them 
at night in the enclosure with green corn, Hungarian grass, 
clover, rye, cabbage, and everything eatable. 

If you will sprinkle over this pen more or less straw or corn- 
fodder, it will be an advantage. But do not plough it up till 
you want to sow or plant some kind of crop. Better have two 
or three acres that are very rich than ten that are very poor. 
Cows may pasture among rocks and stumps and on hillsides 



9<$ FARMING WITH GREEN MANTJHKS 

where you never plough, and may return at night to enrich the 
pen; and this will pay you well for their night and morning meal. 
Mechi says: "1500 sheep folded on an acre of land for twenty- 
four hours (or 100 sheep fifteen days) would manure that land 
sufficiently to carry it through a four years' rotation." By this 
wise arrangement they save all the liquid as well as the solid 
residue. 'ITiis is a matter of vast importance. 

However, as it is almost an utter impossibility to save all the 
liquids unless we adopt Mechi's costly plan, what an over- 
whelming argument in favor of green manures! For all the 
liquid of any value in grain or in manure originally came from 
the green stalk. 



CHAPTER XX. 

JOHN JOHNSTON AND OTHERS ON RAISING WHEAT, 

IN 1874 one of the editors of the Country Gentleman after a 
visit to John Johnston said : "Mr. Johnston showed us a field 
upon which he had raised wheat for more than thirty years 
every alternate year, the average yield constantly increasing.. 
His plan was to fallow-plough about the middle of June; plough 
again about September 1st, and top dress heavily with manure 
and sow wheat. Early the next spring he sowed on clover-seed 
and plaster. After harvest, if the clover grew large enough to 
head out, he pastured it more or less, but if no blossoms appeared 
he put no stock on it. The next spring he pastured the clover 
lightly until it blossomed, when it was turned under as before. 
He had found this two-crop ratation very successful." 

Now, can there be any objection to the addition of one more 
green crop as a top dressing to this very successful mode of 
raising wheat.? You recollect how strongly he is in favor of 
some kind of protection to save the crop from the blasting winds 
and other injuries. After ploughing in the clover there would 
be ample time to raise ten or fifteen tons per acre of green corn, 
and to cultivate and clean the field as effectually as if nothing was 
growing on it. 

We should notice this fact — that he "top dressed heavily 
with manure." Yet even that did not prevent the wheat from 
being killed when exposed to north-west winds. 

If the free use of the very best manure will always ensure a 
heavy crop of wheat, his crops should never fail. He was in the 
habit every winter of feeding many tons of oil-cake and about 
1500 bushels of corn and a large amount of hay. With such a 
mass of rich material why should he need or use anything else ? 
Yet he ploughed in clover. And such clover! How rank it 



98 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

must have grown after the top dressing such as he gave the 
wheat! Yet how careful he was only to pasture the clover lightly 
before turning it in! In fact, he made use of every means in his 
power to insure heavy crops of wheat. 

Joseph Harris, in his celebrated lecture on Wheat-Culture in 
Western New York, gives us Johnston's views on the use of salt 
and lime. 

"On rich land," says Harris, "salt has a tendency to check 
an excessive growth of straw. In some experiments made 
recently on the farm of the Royal Agricultural Society the un- 
manured plot of wheat produced twenty-nine bushels per acre, 
and the plot dressed with three hundredweight of common salt 
thirty-eight and three-fourths bushels, or an increase of nine 
and three-fourths bushels per acre. 

"A few years ago I was on the farm of John Jolinston of 
Seneca county. He had dressed a part of a field of wheat with a 
barrel of salt per acre, and the effect was most decidedly bene- 
ficial. The wheat was heavier and the straw much brighter 
and stiffer. It also ripened several days earlier, and escaped the 
midge in consequence. Mr. Johnston is here with us to-day, 
and he has just informed me that he thinks there is nothing like 
salt for stiffening the straw on rich lands. He sows a barrel per 
acre on the fallows just before sowing the wheat. He has sown 
as much as seventy-five barrels in a year on his wheat. 

"Lime is also a splendid manure for producing plump 
heads of wheat and a stiff straw. There is nothing like it. Mr. 
Johnston says if he were a young man he would lime every acre 
of his farm. In 1844 he applied 200 bushels of lime on two acres 
before sowing the wheat, and it was a magnificient crop — over 
fifty bushels per acre; and he says he can see the effect of that lime 
on the land to the present day." — Genesee Farmer 1863. 

After reading this shall we be afraid to plough in green man- 
ure, lest it should make weak straw and cause the wheat to fall ? 
Here we have a certain remedy in salt and lime. But we must 



JOHN JOHNSTON AND OTHERS ON RAISING WHEAT 99 

be careful not to use too much lime. There is an old proverb — 
the lesson, we presume, of observation and experience — 

"That too much lime and no manure 
Will make the farm and farmer poor." 

The reason is plain enough. Lime contains very little plant- 
food. A good crop of wheat of thirty-four bushels per acre 
takes from the soil only one pound of lime, and the straw about 
seven pounds. 

Alderman Mechi found salt to be indispensable on his rich 
land. He says he salted all his wheat at the rate of four to 
eight bushels per acre, and urns determined to use much more. He 
knew a gentleman in Northamptonshire whose wheat crop could 
scarcely ever be kept from going down until he used salt, which 
had effectually kept it standing. 

When putting in wheat it is a matter of great importance to 
have the land in the right condition to receive the seed. If you 
plough in a very heavy green crop and sow at once, you may have 
an almost total failure and raise but a few bushels of wheat. The 
reason is plain. If dry weather should come on and continue 
for several weeks, there will be a nearly complete separation be- 
tween the surface and subsoil. The wheat cannot grow in the 
dry crust, and as no moisture can arise from capillary attraction 
to soften this crust, the seed may perish, or make but a feeble 
growth till the ensuing spring. From a careless disregard of 
these facts even large crops of clover ploughed in have been ap- 
parently injurious, and the whole system of green manuring has 
been condemned and abandoned. 

We find some very excellent advice upon this subject in the 
foreign correspondence of the Country Gentleman. The writer 
says: "We want the ground to settle before sowing. Never 
sow wheat or rye on new-ploughed land if you can help it, but 
give it the last furrow [plowing] from six to eight weeks before 
sowing-time. This is of the highest importance. The soil then 
becomes thoroughly pulverized by the alternate action of rain 



100 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

and sun — it rots: ay, it will rise (puff) like well-made dough — ^I 
can describe it in no other way. The land must look as if yeast 
had been put into it, which had done its work well. Then 
is the time to sow." 

Here you see the ground must settle. Now, it cannot settle in 
dry weather if piled on top of green manure of any kind. In 
some seasons there will be so much rain just at the right time that 
all seeds will grow, no matter when or how carelessly they are 
put in. That we may never fail to raise a good crop of wheat, 
I prefer to have Indian corn for the last green dressing, and to 
keep it on top as a mulch, as directed in Chapter XI. 

On spreading lime and other fertilizers I wish to say a few 
words. I have so often noticed the utter impossibility of 
spreading anything evenly with the shovel that I was induced to 
devise a machine which will sow from three bushels to three 
hundred per care of material as fine as plaster or as coarse as the 
grains of Indian corn. Its cheapness, simplicity, and durability 
will recommend it to every one. It consists of a hollow cylinder 
or drum from six to twelve feet in length and from two to three 
feet in diameter. It is formed of long boards or vanes, which 
have one edge fastened by a hinge at each end to a drumhead, 
and also by a hinge to a drumhead in the middle. The free 
edge of every board overlaps the hinged edge of the vane next to 
it. By means of movable bolts the space between the overlapp- 
ing edges can be adjusted to the thirty-second of an inch, or to a 
whole inch, depending on the desired rate of application. A 
shaft runs through the drum and has a wheel at each end. One 
wheel is fastened to the drum to turn it. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES. 

FARMS that have been worked by tenants or by careless 
owners for a long course of years generally become so 
poor that very little more than the seed sown is obtained in 
the yearly produce. 

Now, it is a vital question to every farmer, What change has 
taken place in the soil that it will no longer yield a remunerative 
crop ? If the minerals have been entirely exhausted, he may be 
living where he cannot procure ground bone and other fertiliz- 
ers at any reasonable price, and hence he must abandon the 
farm and leave it to time and Nature to restore. 

But, most fortunately for man, this is very seldom, if ever, 
the case. 

Many well-established facts are on record that prove that the 
loss of power to produce even a small crop is owing to the con- 
sumption of nitrogenous compounds and vegetable matter in the 
soil. I call it a consumption because it is a positive burning up 
by oxidation of everything in the ground that had been deposit- 
ed there by the growth and decay of organic matter. 

And the more you plough and harrow and lossen up the soil, 
the faster will this destruction take place. Then you will please 
remember this plain truth, that fire and tillage with the plough 
and harrow act in the same way and accomplish the same ob- 
ject — the exhaustion of the farm. In corroboration of these 
views let me give you a very interesting and instructive fact to 
verify them. 

Joseph Harris, in the Genesee Farmer of 1863, says: "Thirty 
or forty years ago the oak-openings in Western New York were 
considered far inferior to the heavily-timbered land and to the 
lowlands on the borders of the Genesee River. The Indians had 



102 FAKMING WITH GREEN RLA^NTJRES 

for years burnt over this land, and consequently it was to a great 
extent destitute of organic matter. On this soil plaster and 
clover acted like a charm. Large crops of clover have been 
raised for years and ploughed under. The plaster stimulated 
the growth of clover, and the clover when ploughed under fur- 
nished the soil with large quantities of organic matter; and the 
result is that this land, which was formerly considered poor, is 
the best and most productive in the State." 

Here we have reliable and satisfactory proof that poor land 
can be restored to a productive condition without purchasing 
artificial manures beyond a small amount of ground limestone 
or lime. — ^Plaster has been found in recent years to be much less 
effective than formerly. Now, if we ask the chemist what 
must that soil contain to yield fine crops of grain, he will tell you, 
"The ash of agricultural plants consists of the phosphates, sul- 
phates, silicates, and carbonates of potash, soda, lime, and 
magnesia, with small quantities of oxide of iron and manganese 
and alkaline chlorides." — Johnston. 

Then all but the sulphates must have been in the soil, but 
were not available for some cause. What was that cause .? 

What was indispensable to enable them to become active.'' 
The earth was comparatively destitute of atmospheric food. 
There was the great and only deficiency. 

The rich manure so much needed was floating in an invisible 
state above the poor fields. The chemist tells us that "When a 
vegetable is destroyed by burning it is mostly resolved into the 
gases of the air. On the other hand, when it is formed by growth 
its substance is mostly derived from air," 

This being the case, it is imperative on us to introduce the 
elements of the air into the soil and convert them into plant-food. 
How shall we do this.^* We must loosen up the earth, and keep 
it moist and mellow during all the growing seasons of the year. 

To accomplish this effectually and in the cheapest manner, 
we must cover the land with green crops, and keep them upon 
the surface as long as possible, and then plough them in when 
grain or anything else must be sown. To be satisfied that they 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES 103 

are all-sufficient we have only to study their wonderful effects. 
When the ground is loose from the presence of humus — that is, 
vegetable matter in a state of decay — the air is freely admitted, 
and its nitrogen is to a certain extent converted into nitric acid or 
nitrates and ammonia; by bacteria, and, most fortunately, these 
compounds are retained by the moisture and the absorbent power 
of the organic matter. And besides this, a large portion of the 
nitrogen contained in the green dressing also undergoes the 
same chemical change and is treasured up for future crops. 

The incomparable merits of green manures are not all the 
qualities that make this mode of improvement the great sheet- 
anchor of the practical farmer. 

The roots of growing plants have great power over the min- 
erals of the soil in breaking up their texture and reducing them 
to powder. And here let me say, Have no fear of getting too 
much humus into the soil. An acre of land twelve inches deep 
weighs 2000 tons. If you could plough in 100 tons of green 
manure every one, two, or three years, that would only be mix- 
ing the one-twentieth of vegetable matter with nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the earth a foot deep. Would one gold dollar among 
twenty copper cents make the pile of money look too rich ? 

Even on the dark prairies of the INIiddle West the immense 
amount of good derived from the preservation and frequent 
replenishing of organic matter in the soil has been noticed and 
recorded by many practical farmers, 

C. W. Babbitt of Metamora, Woodford County, Illinois, 
says in the Patent Office Report of 1855: "It would seem that 
the prairies here might be continued in their virgin richness, 
simply by annually ploughing under the stubble of our grain- 
jSelds and the stalks of Indian corn, never allowing them to be 
consumed by fire. A short distance south of this resided two 
farmers, one of whom every year gathered up this corn-stalks 
and burnt them, and also burnt over his stubble-fields before 
ploughing. The other never allowed a stalk or a straw to be 
burnt on his land, but always ploughed them under. After some 
fifteen years had elapsed the farm of the former yielded on an 



104 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

average some fifteen bushels of corn less to the acre than when he 
commenced cultivating it, while that of the latter produced as 
abundantly as at first." 

It is a matter of astonishment that a prairie soil, which is 
dark with the decayed remains of an old vegetation, should 
show in the comparatively short period of fifteen years any 
neglect to restore to the ground the humus it had lost by the 
production of grain. 

David A. Wells, in his Book of Agriculture, 1855 and 1856, 
says: "It is estimated by intelligent farmers in Indiana that their 
river -bottoms, which used to produce an average crop of sixty 
bushels of corn to the acre, now produce only forty. In Wiscon- 
sin, which is younger still, it is estimated that only one-half the 
number of bushels of wheat are now raised on the acre which 
were raised twelve years ago." 

Here we have whole districts suffering from the same cause — 
the exhaustion of organic matter, and which can be restored with 
little labor and little cost. If the loss of productive power was 
owing to the exhaustion of mineral food, this could only be 
renewed from the subsoil and rocks by a long rest or by purchas- 
ing the lost material at great expense. 

Is it necessary to say anything more upon this subject.'^ Is 
not every one convinced that raising wheat would ruin one-half 
of all the farmers in the world if the diminution of their crops 
arose from the loss of minerals in the soil ? Why "? Because 
one-half of them are living where they cannot obtain artificial 
manures at any reasonable price. I cannot close this subject 
without the presentation of one more argument, which has 
already been before the public for some time. 

"An incendiary reduced to ashes a pile of barley-stacks from 
some twelve to fifteen acres of barley. The ashes were scattered 
over about half an acre of ground adjoining the stacks, thus con- 
centrating the mineral constituents to about one-twenty-fifth 
of the land from which they were taken. 

"A turnip crop, a barley crop, and a crop of seeds taken sub- 
sequently from this half acre showed no perceptible superiority 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES 105 

over the rest of the field, neither portions of the and yielding 
more than ordinary products." — Cultivator, 1853. 

This costly, but useful experiment proves beyond cavil 
that the nitric acid and ammonia in the air are not sufficient to 
supply all the available nitrogen which is needed to produce a 
luxuriant vegetation. 

Did these compounds of nitrogen exist in the air or in the 
soil in ample abundance, what immense crops would have been 
produced on that half acre! 

Suppose the farmer had spread this pile of barley-stacks, 
with all the grain in them, on half an acre of ground, what would 
have been the result ? Twelve to fifteen acres of barley, even at 
twenty-five bushels per acre, would be from 300 to 375 bushels 
of grain in the stacks. Now, if you would spread this amount 
of barley on the half acre without the straw, it certainly would 
manure it well. Then add the straw, which could not have been 
less than twelve to fifteen tons, and when all was worked into 
the soil do you think the turnip crop, the barley crop, and the 
crop of seed would have "shown no perceptible superiority over 
the rest of the field." 

Now, let us see what lesson we are taught by the analysis of a 
very rich alluvial soil. 

Prof. Johnson says the Zuyder Zee river bottom soil, contains 
enough of potash for 144 maximum and 648 average crops of 
barley, and enough of phosphoric acid for sixty-five maximum 
and 292 average crops, and enough of nitrogen in ammonia for 
seven maximum and thirty-one average barley crops. Here 
we see that without some addition from the air the ammonia 
would be exhausted by very large crops in seven years. Then, 
according to the teaching of the burnt stacks of barley, to obtain 
paying crops we should put on some kind of manure containing 
nitrogen or plough in green crops. Yet, according to common 
practice, many farmers would go to the expense of sowing on 
more phosphates as soon as the crops began to fail. This is a 
lesson which should not be forgotten. Then we will always 
know what to do when the crops begin to diminish. Not a 



106 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

shadow of doubt will rest upon it. We must at once restore to 
the soil the organic elements by ploughing in green manures. 
Of course the first choice will be clover; if that will not grow even 
with the aid of lime or plaster, then we may resort to oats or 
rye or buckwheat. 

The reader may entertain the suspicion that I set too high a 
value upon the restorative powers of clover. To prove that it is 
almost impossible to do this, I ask a careful reading of the follow- 
ing extract of a letter from the Hon. George Geddes of New 
York to Joseph Harris. 

He says: "All that I shall try to prove to you is, that the fact 
that clover and plaster are by far the cheapest manures that 
can be had for our lands has been demonstrated by many farmers 
beyond a doubt — so much cheaper than barnyard manure that 
the mere loading and spreading of the latter cost more than the 
plaster and clover." 

This clear declaration has more weight with me than the testi- 
mony of ten thousand unknown farmers, because George Geddes 
has experimented with clover intelligently, and relied upon it on 
his own farm for the last sixty or seventy years. 

I will close this with the encouraging words of Dr. Voelcker, 
the able and reliable chemist who has devoted so much of his 
time and talents to the examination of this subject. 

He says: "Indeed, no kind of manure can be compared in 
point of efficacy for wheat to the manuring which the land gets 
in a really good crop of clover." 

We have said that if clover will not grow by itself you had 
better sow some other kind of seed. It is very probable that oats 
will grow ten or fifteen inches high if sown and rolled in with 
the clover-seed. Then you should watch it closely, and as soon 
as it comes in blossom mow it down with a machine, and let it lie 
to protect and shade and nourish the young clover. 

Among old writers on agriculture I find that oats are strongly 
recommended to be sown in spring and summer, to be fed off by 
cattle to improve the land. If the animals receive nothing but 
the green oats for nourishment, of course their manure would 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES 107 

add nothing to the soil that the pasture could not return if 
ploughed in or cut down and left upon the field. But if the cattle 
were fed with oil-cake or Indian meal, or something else, twice a 
day, it would make a material difference in the value of the 
manure left while grazing on the green oats. 

Buckwheat might be used in the same way either as a green 
dressing or as feed for cattle. But in the latter case you must 
only let the animals remain on the green buckwheat a short time 
once or twice a day. They are so fond of it, and it is so rich and 
so easily eaten, being soft and succulent, they would soon injure 
themselves if permitted to remain on the pasture all the time. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES. 

TT is a very common practice among agricultural writers to 

advise all persons having large farms which are in a very poor 
condition to sell one-half or two-thirds of their land, and apply 
all the money they receive in manuring and improving the bal- 
ance of their property. 

In some cases this may be the most prudent course to follow, 
but, as a general rule, I am opposed to this advice for two very 
good reasons: 

First, you can get but very little per acre for your poor fields; 
and, secondly, if you improve your property with judgment you 
can enhance its value so rapidly that in seven or eight years it 
will be worth double or treble its former valuation. 

To begin your improvement, take the old field about half a 
mile from the house, and which is now covered with thin yellow 
grass and a mellow soil about one or two inches deep, produced 
by many years of exposure to the weather. 

It has never been ploughed since you knew it. And, I beg 
you, do not plough it now at the beginning of your efforts to make 
better. Let me show you what a coating of fine mellow earth is 
worth upon the surface. 

In Egypt the annual overflow of the Nile deposits on the land 
a thin stratum of very fine soil which amounts only to four or 
five inches in a century. This yearly settling, which is 
only the twentieth of an inch in thickness, of almost impalpable 
dust, does much towards keeping the farms rich and productive. 
The Egyptians do not plough this precious coat under, but sow 
the seed on the moist ground as the waters subside, and then if, 
possible, they drive sheep and hogs or goats over it to press the 
seed into the soil. 



HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES 109 

We should all learn a useful lesson from their example and 
experience. We should not plough down the only part which 
the air has enriched by mingling and uniting with it for so many 
years, but early in the spring we should harrow as many acres 
of the old field as we can sow with clover-seed at one peck to the 
acre. 

The principal roots of all plants must be near the surface, 
that they may feel the life-giving influence of air and moisture, 
or the soil must be loosened by Nature or by tillage, that the 
atmosphere may penetrate even to the deepest fibres of vegeta- 
tion. Hence the reason that plant-food acts so well upon the 
surface, and that all seeds germinate more quickly, more natural- 
ly, when covered by only one or two inches of soil. But these 
great truths must not be misunderstood. Though the soil must 
be loose, the finer the seed the greater the necessity when planting 
or sowing of pressing with the hand or foot or roller the earth into 
close contact with the grain. 

I remember a little incident which will illustrate this subject 
and fix it in the mind. An old sea-captain who lived in our 
neighborhood tried every year to raise for himself a little tobacco. 
He prepared a little patch of ground with the greatest care. The 
surface was as fine and rich and mellow as he could make it. 
Then he sowed the seed and raked it over once more very gently. 

Yet, much to his surprise and vexation, only a few stalks 
grew each year. But one spring, after the little bed had been 
sown with all the usual care, some fellow, to worry the old cap- 
tain, went secretly on it and tramped and tramped, and danced 
and tramped it, till it was, to all appearance, as hard and solid 
as the most frequented public road. The poor old man gave 
him a seaman's blessing, whoever he might be, and left it to its 
fate. But on his next visit to it he was astounded to see the whole 
bed covered with vigorous plants of tobacco. It seemed that 
every seed had grown. He had a grand crop. After that 
he could always raise tobacco. 

He tramped the ground himself after the seed was sown. 



110 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Here is a practical illustration of this plan which I know 
to be a fact. 

A person bought a very poor farm near the southern boun- 
dary of Pennsylvania, and tried to raise grain upon it in the 
usual way. But nothing grew large or strong enough to produce 
seed. Fortunately, he did not sacrifice the property by selling it 
at a very low figure, as many would have done. He sowed every 
acre of it with clover-seed and plastered it every year. For a 
living he followed the profession of an auctioneer. 

About seven or eight or more years the clover grew upon his 
farm, undisturbed by plough or hoof of any kind. Then he con- 
cluded to try his hand again at farming. Many of his neighbors 
gathered to see the first ploughing after so long a rest from 
tillage. 

An old farmer who was present assured me that the soil 
turned over eight or nine inches deep as black as your hat and 
as mellow as an ash-heap. 

More than fifty years have now passed since that occurrence, 
and the farm has the reputation of being rich and productive 
to the present day. 

I passed it a few years ago, and looked over it with about the 
same interest I would survey the fields of Marathon and Platica, 
where a noble work had once been achieved by man. 

One thing about it was always a source of regret to me. I 
never could ascertain the precise number of years the fields re- 
mained undisturbed in their growth of clover. 

Green crops have a manurial power equal.if not superior, to 
every other mode of improvement. Their roots penetrate the 
earth and open millions of channels, which permit the air with 
all its rich constituents to act upon the subsoil and improve it, 
not only by compelling the decay of vegetable matter, but by 
entering into new compounds and thus becoming available food 
for plants. 

A farmer once dug up a clover-root seven feet ten inches in 
length. This of course might be a giant among them. 



HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES 111 

But what has once happened in Nature may happen again. 
We accept this as an index to the general average. 

We suppose that three-fourths — ^\'es, we hope that nine-tenths 
— of all clover-roots are three feet in length. But if they pene- 
trate the unploughed ground but two feet, what a vast amount 
of good they will do! 

How superior in their action to barnyard manure! They 
change the color, the texture, and the quality of the subsoil. 
We know what stable manure can do. The experience of ages 
is before us. The farmers of England have been ploughing in 
the residue of their crops and raising grain more than fifteen hun- 
dred years. Therefore, if the contents of the barnyard and 
artificial manures will make a deep, dark, rich, and productive 
soil, we ought to find it, as a general rule, all over Great Britain. 
But what are the acknowledged facts in the case ? 

Alderman Mechi says: "If you make a transverse cut or 
opening in the soil, you will find that the British agricultural 
pie-crust is only five to eight inches thick. The excavations and 
railway cuts plainly reveal this humiliating fact. Below this 
thin crust we see a primitive soil, bearing most unmistakable 
evidence of antiquity and unalterability. The dark shades of 
the cultivated and manured surface have not been communicated 
to the pale subsoil." 

In another place he shows that all their labor and expensive 
fertilizers have extended only a few inches below the surface. 

He says: "My observation of the present cultivation oi our 
stiff clays would give an average depth of about four or five 
inches : all below this may be considered as unknown and unim- 
proved territory." 

Do not suppose from these quotations that we are in favor of 
plunging into the subsoil with a large plough and a strong pair 
of horses. Nothing of the kind: that task belongs to clover. 

We know that it is reckless, if not dangerous, even with fifteen 
or twenty tons of stable manure per acre, to plough deeper than 
usual under the delusive hope that we can easily make a thicker 
"pie-crust," and thus be able to raise larger crops. 



112 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

In 1865, on my Farm, we had a field ploughed so 
deep that its productive power was impaired for several years. 
It was done when I was not there, and of course I could not 
prevent it. We are so well satisfied of this fact that we record it 
as a warning to others. 

Mechi says: "We know that there is nothing of which a 
farmer is so much afraid as the sub-soil six or seven inches below 
the surface; if he brings this at once to the surface, he will grow 
nothing for some time." This is owing to the absence of the 
proper bacteria and essential conditions for their growth in the 
sterile sub-soil. 

These plain truths should convince every one that the cheap- 
est and most effectual way to bring up a poor farm to a high state 
of productiveness, and also to prevent a good farm from becom- 
ing poor, is to keep every field in clover as long as possible. 
Other green crops are useful, but clover outranks them all. 
Follow this advice year after year, and you will find the dark 
crust of your farm is fen or twelve inches thick from the gradual 
decay of the clover-roots which have worked their way into 
the subsoil. Then it will be wise and profitable to plough even 
a foot deep into the new and rich fields which lie beneath the 
surface. 

But what shall we do for a living on our poor farm while 
every field is growing clover ? Well, that seems to be an import- 
ant question, and most cheerfully I will answer it. 

But let me first prepare your mind for the advice I am going 
to give you. If you will ask the best and most successful farmers 
what proportion of their crops do they return as manure to the 
land, they will answer, we presume, in the words of Joseph 
Harris: "We put on the unsold produce of ten acres to manure 
one." Here you see that all the straw, corn-fodder, hay, and 
the residue of grain consumed on a farm of 100 acres would be 
returned as manure to ten acres. Is not that a capital concen- 
tration? Certainly a field with such a dressing should bring 
forty bushels of wheat or eighty bushels of corn per acre. Yet 
for some reason this seldom happens. 



CHAPTER XX. 

JOHN JOHNSTON AND OTHERS ON RAISING WHEAT. 

IN 1874 one of the editors of the Country Gentleman after a 
visit to John Johnston said: "Mr. Johnston showed us a field 
upon which he had raised wheat for more than thirty years 
every alternate year, the average yield constantly increasing. 
His plan was to fallow-plough about the middle of June; plough 
again about September 1st, and top dress heavily with manure 
and sow wheat. Early the next spring he sowed on clover-seed 
and plaster. After harvest, if the clover grew large enough to 
head out, he pastured it more or less, but if no blossoms appeared 
he put no stock on it. The next spring he pastured the clover 
lightly until it blossomed, when it was turned under as before. 
He had found this two-crop ratation very successful." 

Now, can there be any objection to the addition of one more 
green crop as a top dressing to this very successful mode of 
raising wheat.? You recollect how strongly he is in favor of 
some kind of protection to save the crop from the blasting winds 
and other injuries. After ploughing in the clover there would 
be ample time to raise ten or fifteen tons per acre of green corn, 
and to cultivate and clean the field as effectually as if nothing was 
growing on it. 

We should notice this fact— that he "top dressed heavily 
with manure." Yet even that did not prevent the wheat from 
being killed when exposed to north-west winds. 

If the free use of the very best manure will always ensure a 
heavy crop of wheat, his crops should never fail. He was in the 
habit every winter of feeding many tons of oil-cake and about 
1500 bushels of corn and a large amount of hay. With such a 
mass of rich material why should he need or use anything else ? 
Yet he ploughed in clover. And such clover! How rank it 



98 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

must have grown after the top dressing such as he gave the 
wheat! Yet how careful he was only to pasture the clover lightly 
before turning it in ! In fact, he made use of every means in his 
power to insure heavy crops of wheat. 

Joseph Harris, in his celebrated lecture on Wheat-Culture in 
Western New York, gives us Johnston's views on the use of salt 
and lime. 

"On rich land," says Harris, "salt has a tendency to check 
an excessive growth of straw. In some experiments made 
recently on the farm of the Royal Agricultural Society the un- 
manured plot of wheat produced twenty-nine bushels per acre, 
and the plot dressed with three hundredweight of common salt 
thirty-eight and three-fourths bushels, or an increase of nine 
and three-fourths bushels per acre. 

"A few years ago I was on the farm of John Johnston of 
Seneca county. He had dressed a part of a field of wheat with a 
barrel of salt per acre, and the effect was most decidedly bene- 
ficial. The wheat was heavier and the straw much brighter 
and stiffer. It also ripened several days earlier, and escaped the 
midge in consequence. Mr. Johnston is here with us to-day, 
and he has just informed me that he thinks there is nothing like 
salt for stiffening the straw on rich lands. He sows a barrel per 
acre on the fallows just before sowing the wheat. He has sown 
as much as seventy-five barrels in a year on his wheat. 

"Lime is also a splendid manure for producing plump 
heads of wheat and a stiff straw. There is nothing like it. Mr. 
Johnston says if he were a young man he would lime every acre 
of his farm. In 1844 he applied 200 bushels of lime on two acres 
before sowing the Avheat, and it was a magnificient crop — over 
fifty bushels per acre; and he says he can see the effect of that lime 
on the land to the present day."— Genesee Farmer 1863. 

After reading this shall we be afraid to plough in green man- 
ure, lest it should make weak straw and cause the wheat to fall .'' 
Here we have a certain remedy in salt and lime. But we must 



JOHN JOHNSTON AND OTHERS ON RAISING WHEAT 99 

be careful not to use too much lime. There is an old proverb — 
the lesson, we presume, of observation and experience — 

"That too much lime and no manure 
Will make the farm and farmer poor." 

The reason is plain enough. Lime contains very little plant- 
food. A good crop of wheat of thirty-four bushels per acre 
takes from the soil only one pound of lime, and the straw about 
seven pounds. 

Alderman Mechi found salt to be indispensable on his rich 
land. He says he salted all his wheat at the rate of four to 
eight bushels per acre, and was determined to use much more. He 
knew a gentleman in Northamptonshire whose wheat crop could 
scarcely ever be kept from going down until he used salt, which 
had effectually kept it standing. 

When putting in wheat it is a matter of great importance to 
have the land in the right condition to receive the seed. If you 
plough in a very heavy green crop and sow at once, you may have 
an almost total failure and raise but a few bushels of wheat. The 
reason is plain. If dry weather should come on and continue 
for several weeks, there will be a nearly complete separation be- 
tween the surface and subsoil. The wheat cannot grow in the 
dry crust, and as no moisture can arise from capillary attraction 
to soften this crust, the seed may perish, or make but a feeble 
growth till the ensuing spring. From a careless disregard of 
these facts even large crops of clover ploughed in have been ap- 
parently injurious, and the whole system of green manuring has 
been condemned and abandoned. 

We find some very excellent advice upon this subject in the 
foreign correspondence of tlie Country Gentleman. The writer 
says: "We want the ground to settle before sowing. Never 
sow wheat or rye on new-ploughed land if you can help it, but 
give it the last furrow [plowing] from six to eight weeks before 
sowing-time. This is of the highest importance. The soil then 
becomes thoroughly pulverized by the alternate action of rain 



100 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

and sun — it rots: ay, it will rise (puff) like well-made dough — I 
can describe it in no other way. The land must look as if yeast 
had been put into it, which had done its work well. Then 
is the time to sow." 

Here you see the ground must settle. Now, it cannot settle in 
dry weather if piled on top of green manure of any kind. In 
some seasons there will be so much rain just at the right time that 
all seeds will grow, no matter when or how carelessly they are 
put in. That we may never fail to raise a good crop of wheat, 
I prefer to have Indian corn for the last green dressing, and to 
keep it on top as a mulch, as directed in Chapter XI. 

On spreading lime and other fertilizers I wish to say a few 
words. I have so often noticed the utter impossibility of 
spreading anything evenly with the shovel that I was induced to 
devise a machine which will sow from three bushels to three 
hundred per care of material as fine as plaster or as coarse as the 
grains of Indian corn. Its cheapness, simplicity, and durability 
will recommend it to every one. It consists of a hollow cylinder 
or drum from six to twelve feet in length and from two to three 
feet in diameter. It is formed of long boards or vanes, which 
have one edge fastened by a hinge at each end to a drumhead, 
and also by a hinge to a drumhead in the middle. The free 
edge of every board overlaps the hinged edge of the vane next to 
it. By means of movable bolts the space between the overlapp- 
ing edges can be adjusted to the thirty-second of an inch, or to a 
whole inch, depending on the desired rate of application. A 
shaft runs through the drum and has a wheel at each end. One 
wheel is fastened to the drum to turn it. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES. 

FARMS that have been worked by tenants or by careless 
owners for a long course of years generally become so 
poor that very little more than the seed sown is obtained in 
the yearly produce. 

Now, it is a vital question to every farmer, What change has 
taken place in the soil that it will no longer yield a remunerative 
crop ? If the minerals have been entirely exhausted, he may be 
living where he cannot procure ground bone and other fertiliz- 
ers at any reasonable price, and hence he must abandon the 
farm and leave it to time and Nature to restore. 

But, most fortunately for man, this is very seldom, if ever, 
the case. 

Many well-established facts are on record that prove that the 
loss of power to produce even a small crop is owing to the con- 
sumption of nitrogenous compounds and vegetable matter in the 
soil. I call it a consumption because it is a positive burning up 
by oxidation of everything in the ground that had been deposit- 
ed there by the growth and decay of organic matter. 

And the more you plough and harrow and lossen up the soil, 
the faster will this destruction take place. Then you will please 
remember this plain truth, that fire and tillage with the plough 
and harrow act in the same way and accomplish the same ob- 
ject — the exhaustion of the farm. In corroboration of these 
views let me give you a very interesting and instructive fact to 
verify them. 

Joseph Harris, in the Genesee Farmer of 1863, says: "Thirty 
or forty years ago the oak-openings in Western New York were 
considered far inferior to the heavily-timbered land and to the 
lowlands on the borders of the Genesee River. The Indians had 



102 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

for years burnt over this land, and consequently it was to a great 
extent destitute of organic matter. On this soil plaster and 
clover acted like a charm. Large crops of clover have been 
raised for years and ploughed under. The plaster stimulated 
the growth of clover, and the clover when ploughed under fur- 
nished the soil with large quantities of organic matter; and the 
result is that this land, which was formerly considered poor, is 
the best and most productive in the State." 

Here we have reliable and satisfactory proof that poor land 
can be restored to a productive condition without purchasing 
artificial manures beyond a small amount of ground limestone 
or lime. — ^Plaster has been found in recent years to be much less 
effective than formerh^ Now, if we ask the chemist what 
must that soil contain to yield fine crops of grain, he will tell you, 
"The ash of agricultural plants consists of the phosphates, sul- 
phates, silicates, and carbonates of potash, soda, lime, and 
magnesia, with small quantities of oxide of iron and manganese 
and alkaline chlorides." — Johnston. 

Then all but the sulphates must have been in the soil, but 
were not available for some cause. What was that cause ? 

What was indispensable to enable them to become active.'' 
The earth was comparatively destitute of atmospheric food. 
There was the great and only deficiency. 

The rich manure so much needed was floating in an invisible 
state above the poor fields. The chemist tells us that "When a 
vegetable is destroyed by burning it is mostly resolved into the 
gases of the air. On the other hand, when it is formed by growth 
its substance is mostly derived from air," 

This being the case, it is imperative on us to introduce the 
elements of the air into the soil and convert them into plant-food. 
How shall we do this ? We must loosen up the earth, and keep 
it moist and mellow during all the growing seasons of the year. 

To accomplish this effectually and in the cheapest manner, 
we must cover the land with green crops, and keep them upon 
the surface as long as possible, and then plough them in when 
grain or anything else must be sown. To be satisfied that they 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN RIANURES 103 

are all-sufficient we have only to study their wonderful effects. 
When the ground is loose from the presence of humus — that is, 
vegetable matter in a state of decay — the air is freely admitted, 
and its nitrogen is to a certain extent converted into nitric acid or 
nitrates and ammonia; by bacteria, and, most fortunately, these 
compounds are retained by the moisture and the absorbent power 
of the organic matter. And besides this, a large portion of the 
nitrogen contained in the green dressing also undergoes the 
same chemical change and is treasured up for future crops. 

The incomparable merits of green manures are not all the 
qualities that make this mode of improvement the great sheet- 
anchor of the practical farmer. 

The roots of growing plants have great power over the min- 
erals of the soil in breaking up their texture and reducing them 
to powder. And here let me say. Have no fear of getting too 
much humus into the soil. An acre of land twelve inches deep 
weighs 2000 tons. If you could plough in 100 tons of green 
manure every one, two, or three years, that would only be mix- 
ing the one-twentieth of vegetable matter with nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the earth a foot deep. Would one gold dollar among 
twenty copper cents make the pile of money look too rich t 

Even on the dark prairies of the Middle West the immense 
amount of good derived from the preservation and frequent 
replenishing of organic matter in the soil has been noticed and 
recorded by many practical farmers. 

C. W. Babbitt of Metamora, Woodford County, Illinois, 
says in the Pate'nt Office Report of 1855: "It would seem that 
the prairies here might be continued in their virgin richness, 
simply by annually ploughing under the stubble of our grain- 
fields and the stalks of Indian corn, never allowing them to be 
consumed by fire. A short distance south of this resided two 
farmers, one of whom every year gathered up this corn-stalks 
and burnt them, and also burnt over his stubble-fields before 
ploughing. The other never allowed a stalk or a straw to be 
burnt on his land, but always ploughed them under. After some 
fifteen years had elapsed the farm of the former yielded on an 



104 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

average some fifteen bushels of corn less to the acre than when he 
commenced cultivating it, while that of the latter produced as 
abundantly as at first." 

It is a matter of astonishment that a prairie soil, which is 
dark with the decayed remains of an old vegetation, should 
show in the comparatively short period of fifteen years any 
neglect to restore to the ground the humus it had lost by the 
production of grain. 

David A. Wells, in his Book of Agriculture, 1855 and 1856, 
says: "It is estimated by intelligent farmers in Indiana that their 
river-bottoms, which used to produce an average crop of sixty 
bushels of corn to the acre, now produce only forty. In Wiscon- 
sin, which is younger still, it is estimated that only one-half the 
number of bushels of wheat are now raised on the acre which 
were raised twelve years ago." 

Here we have whole districts suffering from the same cause — 
the exhaustion of organic matter, and which can be restored with 
little labor and little cost. If the loss of productive power was 
owing to the exhaustion of mineral food, this could only be 
renewed from the subsoil and rocks by a long rest or by purchas- 
ing the lost material at great expense. 

Is it necessary to say anything more upon this subject? Is 
not every one convinced that raising wheat would ruin one-half 
of all the farmers in the world if the diminution of their crops 
arose from the loss of minerals in the soil ? Why ? Because 
one-half of them are living where they cannot obtain artificial 
manures at any reasonable price. I cannot close this subject 
without the presentation of one more argument, which has 
already been before the public for some time. 

"An incendiary reduced to ashes a pile of barley-stacks from 
some twelve to fifteen acres of barley. The ashes were scattered 
over about half an acre of ground adjoining the stacks, thus con- 
centrating the mineral constituents to about one-twenty-fifth 
of the land from which they were taken. 

"A turnip crop, a barley crop, and a crop of seeds taken sub- 
sequently from this half acre showed no perceptible superiority 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES 105 

over the rest of the field, neither portions of the and yielding 
more than ordinary products." — Cultivator, 1853. 

This costly, but useful experiment proves beyond cavil 
that the nitric acid and ammonia in the air are not sufficient to 
supply all the available nitrogen which is needed to produce a 
luxuriant vegetation. 

Did these compounds of nitrogen exist in the air or in the 
soil in ample abundance, what immense crops would have been 
produced on that half acre! 

Suppose the farmer had spread this pile of barley-stacks, 
with all the grain in them, on half an acre of ground, what would 
have been the result ? Twelve to fifteen acres of barley, even at 
twenty-five bushels per acre, would be from 300 to 375 bushels 
of grain in the stacks. Now, if you would spread this amount 
of barley on the half acre without the straw, it certainly would 
manure it well. Then add the straw, which could not have been 
less than twelve to fifteen tons, and when all was worked into 
the soil do you think the turnip crop, the barley crop, and the 
crop of seed would have "shown no perceptible superiority over 
the rest of the field." 

Now, let us see what lesson we are taught by the analysis of a 
very rich alluvial soil. 

Prof. Johnson says the Zuyder Zee river bottom soil, contains 
enough of potash for 144 maximum and 648 average crops of 
barley, and enough of phosphoric acid for sixty-five maximum 
and 292 average crops, and enough of nitrogen in ammonia for 
seven maximum and thirty-one average barley crops. Here 
we see that without some addition from the air the ammonia 
would be exhausted by very large crops in seven years. Then, 
according to the teaching of the burnt stacks of barley, to obtain 
paying crops we should put on some kind of manure containing 
nitrogen or plough in green crops. Yet, according to common 
practice, many farmers would go to the expense of sowing on 
more phosphates as soon as the crops began to fail. This is a 
lesson which should not be forgotten. Then we will always 
know what to do when the crops begin to diminish. Not a 



106 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

shadow of doubt will rest upon it. We must at once restore to 
the soil the organic elements by ploughing in green manures. 
Of course the first choice will be clover; if that will not grow even 
with the aid of lime or plaster, then we may resort to oats or 
rye or buckwheat. 

The reader may entertain the suspicion that I set too high a 
value upon the restorative powers of clover. To prove that it is 
almost impossible to do this, I ask a careful reading of the follow- 
ing extract of a letter from the Hon. George Geddes of New 
York to Joseph Harris. 

He says: "All that I shall try to prove to you is, that the fact 
that clover and plaster are by far the cheapest manures that 
can be had for our lands has been demonstrated by many farmers 
beyond a doubt — so much cheaper than barnyard manure that 
the mere loading and spreading of the latter cost more than the 
plaster and clover." 

This clear declaration has more weight with me than the testi- 
mony of ten thousand unknown farmers, because George Geddes 
has experimented with clover intelligently, and relied upon it on 
his own farm for the last sixty or seventy years. 

I will close this with the encouraging words of Dr. Voelcker, 
the able and reliable chemist who has devoted so much of his 
time and talents to the examination of this subject. 

He says: "Indeed, no kind of manure can be compared in 
point of efficacy for wheat to the manuring which the land gets 
in a really good crop of clover." 

We have said that if clover will not grow by itself you had 
better sow some other kind of seed. It is very probable that oats 
will grow ten or fifteen inches high if sown and rolled in with 
the clover-seed. Then you should watch it closely, and as soon 
as it comes in blossom mow it down with a machine, and let it lie 
to protect and shade and nourish the young clover. 

Among old writers on agriculture I find that oats are strongly 
recommended to be sown in spring and summer, to be fed off by 
cattle to improve the land. If the animals receive nothing but 
the green oats for nourishment, of course their manure would 



THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN MANURES 107 

add nothing to the soil that the pasture could not return if 
ploughed in or cut down and left upon the field. But if the cattle 
were fed with oil-cake or Indian meal, or something else, twice a 
day, it would make a material difference in the value of the 
manure left while grazing on the green oats. 

Buckwheat might be used in the same way either as a green 
dressing or as feed for cattle. But in the latter case you must 
only let the animals remain on the green buckwheat a short time 
once or twice a day. They are so fond of it, and it is so rich and 
so easily eaten, being soft and succulent, they would soon injure 
themselves if permitted to remain on the pasture all the time. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES. 

TT is a very common practice among agricultural writers to 

advise all persons having large farms which are in a very poor 
condition to sell one-half or two-thirds of their land, and apply 
all the money they receive in manuring and improving the bal- 
ance of their property. 

In some cases this may be the most prudent course to follow, 
but, as a general rule, I am opposed to this advice for two very 
good reasons: 

First, you can get but very little per acre for your poor fields; 
and, secondly, if you improve your property with judgment you 
can enhance its value so rapidly that in seven or eight years it 
will be worth double or treble its former valuation. 

To begin your improvement, take the old field about half a 
mile from the house, and which is now covered with thin yellow 
grass and a mellow soil about one or two inches deep, produced 
by many years of exposure to the weather. 

It has never been ploughed since you knew it. And, I beg 
you, do not plough it now at the beginning of your efforts to make 
better. Let me show you what a coating of fine mellow earth is 
worth upon the surface. 

In Egypt the annual overflow of the Nile deposits on the land 
a thin stratum of very fine soil which amounts only to four or 
five inches in a century. This yearly settling, which is 
only the twentieth of an inch in thickness, of almost impalpable 
dust, does much towards keeping the farms rich and productive. 
The Eg}^tians do not plough this precious coat under, but sow 
the seed on the moist ground as the waters subside, and then if, 
possible, they drive sheep and hogs or goats over it to press the 
seed into the soil. 



HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES 109 

We should all learn a useful lesson from their example and 
experience. We should not plough down the only part which 
the air has enriched by mingling and uniting with it for so many 
years, but early in the spring we should harrow as many acres 
of the old field as we can sow with clover-seed at one peck to the 
acre. 

The principal roots of all plants must be near the surface, 
that they may feel the life-giving influence of air and moisture, 
or the soil must be loosened by Nature or by tillage, that the 
atmosphere may penetrate even to the deepest fibres of vegeta- 
tion. Hence the reason that plant-food acts so well upon the 
surface, and that all seeds germinate more quickly, more natural- 
ly, when covered by only one or two inches of soil. But these 
great truths must not be misunderstood. Though the soil must 
be loose, the finer the seed the greater the necessity when planting 
or sowing of pressing with the hand or foot or roller the earth into 
close contact with the grain. 

I remember a little incident which will illustrate this subject 
and fix it in the mind. An old sea-captain who lived in our 
neighborhood tried every year to raise for himself a little tobacco. 
He prepared a little patch of ground with the greatest care. The 
surface was as fine and rich and mellow as he could make it. 
Then he sowed the seed and raked it over once more very gently. 

Yet, much to his surprise and vexation, only a few stalks 
grew each year. But one spring, after the little bed had been 
sown with all the usual care, some fellow, to worry the old cap- 
tain, went secretly on it and tramped and tramped, and danced 
and tramped it, till it was, to all appearance, as hard and solid 
as the most frequented public road. The poor old man gave 
him a seaman's blessing, whoever he might be, and left it to its 
fate. But on his next visit to it he was astounded to see the whole 
bed covered with vigorous plants of tobacco. It seemed that 
every seed had grown. He had a grand crop. After that 
he could always raise tobacco. 

He tramped the ground himself after the seed was sown. 



110 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Here is a practical illustration of this plan which I know 
to be a fact. 

A person bought a very poor farm near the southern boun- 
dary of Pennsylvania, and tried to raise grain upon it in the 
usual way. But nothing grew large or strong enough to produce 
seed. Fortunately, he did not sacrifice the property by selling it 
at a very low figure, as many would have done. He sowed every 
acre of it with clover-seed and plastered it every year. For a 
living he followed the profession of an auctioneer. 

About seven or eight or more years the clover grew upon his 
farm, undisturbed by plough or hoof of any kind. Then he con- 
cluded to try his hand again at farming. Many of his neighbors 
gathered to see the first ploughing after so long a rest from 
tillage. 

An old farmer who was present assured me that the soil 
turned over eight or nine inches deep as black as your hat and 
as mellow as an ash-heap. 

More than fifty years have now passed since that occurrence, 
and the farm has the reputation of being rich and productive 
to the present day. 

I passed it a few years ago, and looked over it with about the 
same interest I would survey the fields of Marathon and Platifia, 
where a noble work had once been achieved by man. 

One thing about it was always a source of regret to me. I 
never could ascertain the precise number of years the fields re- 
mained undisturbed in their growth of clover. 

Green crops have a manurial power equal,if not superior, to 
every other mode of improvement. Their roots penetrate the 
earth and open millions of channels, which permit the air with 
all its rich constituents to act upon the subsoil and improve it, 
not only by compelling the decay of vegetable matter, but by 
entering into new compounds and thus becoming available food 
for plants. 

A farmer once dug up a clover-root seven feet ten inches in 
length. This of course might be a giant among them. 



HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH GREEN MANURES 111 

But what has once happened in Nature may happen again. 
We accept this as an index to the general average. 

We suppose that three-fourths — yes, we hope that nine- tenths 
— of all clover-roots are three feet in length. But if they pene- 
trate the unploughed ground but two feet, what a vast amount 
of good they will do! 

How superior in their action to barnyard manure! They 
change the color, the texture, and the quality of the subsoil. 
We know what stable manure can do. The experience of ages 
is before us. The farmers of England have been ploughing in 
the residue of their crops and raising grain more than fifteen hun- 
dred years. Therefore, if the contents of the barnyard and 
artificial manures will make a deep, dark, rich, and productive 
soil, we ought to find it, as a general rule, all over Great Britain. 
But what are the acknowledged facts in the case ? 

Alderman Mechi says: "If you make a transverse cut or 
opening in the soil, you will find that the British agricultural 
pie-crust is only five to eight inches thick. The excavations and 
railway cuts plainly reveal this humiliating fact. Below this 
thin crust we see a primitive soil, bearing most unmistakable 
evidence of antiquity and unalterability. The dark shades of 
the cultivated and manured surface have not been communicated 
to the pale subsoil." 

In another place he shows that all their labor and expensive 
fertilizers have extended only a few inches below the surface. 

He says: "My observation of the present cultivation of our 
stiff clays would give an average depth of about four or five 
inches : all below this may be considered as unknown and unim- 
proved territory." 

Do not suppose from these quotations that we are in favor of 
plunging into the subsoil with a large plough and a strong pair 
of horses. Nothing of the kind: that task belongs to clover. 

We know that it is reckless, if not dangerous, even with fifteen 
or twenty tons of stable manure per acre, to plough deeper than 
usual under the delusive hope that we can easily make a thicker 
"pie-crust," and thus be able to raise larger crops. 



112 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

In 1865, on my Farm, we had a field ploughed so 
deep that its productive power was impaired for several years. 
It was done when I was not there, and of course I could not 
prevent it. We are so well satisfied of this fact that we record it 
as a warning to others. 

Mechi says: "We know that there is nothing of which a 
farmer is so much afraid as the sub-soil six or seven inches below 
the surface; if he brings this at once to the surface, he will grow 
nothing for some time." This is owing to the absence of the 
proper bacteria and essential conditions for their growth in the 
sterile sub-soil. 

These plain truths should convince every one that the cheap- 
est and most effectual way to bring up a poor farm to a high state 
of productiveness, and also to prevent a good farm from becom- 
ing poor, is to keep every field in clover as long as possible. 
Other green crops are useful, but clover outranks them all. 
Follow this advice year after year, and you will find the dark 
crust of your farm is fen or twelve inches thick from the gradual 
decay of the clover-roots which have worked their way into 
the subsoil. Then it will be wise and profitable to plough even 
a foot deep into the new and rich fields which lie beneath the 
surface. 

But what shall we do for a living on our poor farm while 
every field is growing clover ? Well, that seems to be an import- 
ant question, and most cheerfully I will answer it. 

But let me first prepare your mind for the advice I am going 
to give you. If you will ask the best and most successful farmers 
what proportion of their crops do they return as manure to the 
land, they will answer, we presume, in the words of Joseph 
Harris: "We put on the unsold produce of ten acres to manure 
one." Here you see that all the straw, corn-fodder, hay, and 
the residue of grain consumed on a farm of 100 acres would be 
returned as manure to ten acres. Is not that a capital concen- 
tration? Certainly a field with such a dressing should bring 
forty bushels of wheat or eighty bushels of corn per acre. Yet 
for some reason this seldom happens. 



GKEEN MANURES FOR INDIAN CORN 129 

Indian corn more than any other crop clearly proves the wis- 
dom and profit of concentrating green clover or stable manure 
and labor upon a little land. The careful and experienced farm- 
er w^ill often "use the unsold produce of ten acres to manure one.'* 
And yet we never hear any objection to this almost extravagant 
use of manure. But should we recommend the same thing to 
be done with green clover, you would probably hold up your 
hands in amazement at the advice. That is, the concentration 
of ten acres of green clover upon one acre! Most fortunately^ 
you will not have to do that to raise an immense crop of corn. 

If you will take a field that is thickly set with clover, and the 
crop so heavy that it will cut fifteen tons of green manure just 
as it is coming into blossom, you need only concentrate three 
acres upon one to raise 160 bushels of corn per acre if the seasoa 
is very favorable. 

But it must be done in a certain way to be successful. I will 
give you the plan in detail, and then it will look more reasonable 
to the practical farmer. 

In a fifteen-acre field of clover measure off five acres in the 
middle of the lot, running clear across the field, leaving five acres 
on each side of it. 

When the clover is just beginning to blossom cut down the 
whole crop and rake it on to the five acres. This first dressing 
will amount to 225 tons of green manure. The balance of the 
field, will be in bloom again by the 1st of August. This time we 
have but ten acres to cut. No doubt but this will give us 100 
tons, and must be mown and spread on top of the first crop. 

By the middle or last of September we may cut five tons more 
per acre; that will give fifty tons more to be spread on the other 
two crops. In all there will be 375 tons on the five acres, and 
every ton equal if not superior to a ton of stable manure. 

Now, our best and most successful farmers when manuring 
for corn put on fifteen tons of barnyard manure per acre. Do 
you suppose that that will be equal to our seventy-five tons of 
green clover per acre.'' 



130 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

This green dressing of seventy-five tons contains 900 pounds 
of nitrogen, 187 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 675 pounds of 
potash. The fifteen tons of barnyard manure contain only 150 
pounds of nitrogen, 75 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 187 
pounds of potash. Yet you expect to have eighty bushels of 
corn per acre, and in good seasons actually realize that amount. 
Then have we not a very good reason to expect at least double 
'what you raise — that is, 160 bushels on each acre? 

Our green clover is put on exactly at the right time — in the 
^summer and fall — and, what is of equal importance, is in the 
proper condition to be converted into available plant-food. It 
liolds the ground beneath it for seven or eight months in a moist 
and mouldering state and in a condition of constant improve- 
ment. Hence we depend not only upon the lavish amount of 
actual nourishment which we put on, but also upon the admirable 
preparation of the soil to produce a grand result. And when 
spring returns we are master of the situation. We can plough 
the very day that we should plant the corn. Dry weather can- 
not interrupt our farming operations. 

Yet all our neighbors who have a naked, clayey soil may be 
moping about and wishing and praying for rain that they may 
plough to plant corn. 

When ground is heavily mulched with clover and the soil is a 
rich loam, and, of course, so mellow that ploughing is unneces- 
sary, we can raise corn without turning in the manure. If 
we are satisfied upon a careful examination that the clover is 
dense and deep enough to prevent all weeds from growing, we 
may put in the corn with a hand planter in the following manner! 

In straight lines, three by three or four feet, all over the field 
till it is finished. After this you will have nothing to do to it 
till the crop is ready to cut. 

I feel justified in recommending this method, having seen a 
report of a satisfactory experiment where leaves were used to 
mulch a crop of corn. 

James Camak of Athens, Georgia, says in the Farmers' 
Register: "Last spring I planted a small piece of poor ground. 



GRfeEN MANURES FOR INDIAN CORN 131 

first breaking it up well. The rows were made three feet apart, 
and the stalks left about a foot apart in the drill. The ground 
had been very foul last year with crab-grass, whose seed matured. 
The corn was not well up this spring before the grass began to 
appear. When the corn had about four or five blades the young 
grass completely covered the ground and the corn was turning 
yellow. I spread a small quantity of stable manure around the 
corn, and covered the whole ground with leaves from the forest, 
taking care to do this when the ground was wet, and the leaves 
also, that they might not be blown away, and to leave the tops 
uncovered. In ten days there was not a particle of living grass 
to be found, and the corn had put on that deep bluish-green 
which always betokens a healthful condition of the plant. 

"From the day the corn was planted until after the fodder 
was peeled and the tops cut nothing more was done with it, and 
the result is a product at the rate oi forty-two bushels to the acre, 
about one-third of the stalks having two ears on each of them. 

'T noted in the course of the summer the following facts: 

"1st. The corn treated thus was always ahead of some plant- 
ed alongside of it and treated in the usual way. 

"2d. It ripened at least ten days sooner than other corn 
planted at the same time. 

"3d. During the hottest and driest days the blades never 
twisted up, as did other corn in the neighborhood. 

"4th. In the driest weather, on removing the leaves, the 
ground was found to be moist to the surface, and loose as deep 
as it had been at first breaking up. 

"5th. The heaviest rains had scarcely any effect in washing 
away the soil or making it hard." 

We cannot, of course, use leaves to raise corn, but we can ob- 
tain that which is far better— an abundance of green clover. 

And when we remember that the chemist, after a careful 
analysis, has decided that dead leaves have so very little plant- 
food in them that they are not worth gathering, except as absor- 
bents to be used as bedding for animals, we may be satisfied that 
the corn received no nourishment from the leaves, and all the 



132 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

benefit arose from the protection bestowed upon it as a mulch. 
Then how vastly superior would a heavy dressing of clover be to 
the fallen leaves, which even hungry cattle will not eat, they are 
so worthless! 

But another question comes up for settlement. Would that 
"poor ground," as he calls it, have produced forty-two bushels 
of corn per acre had he worked it in the usual manner? It 
certainly was in a most discouraging condition when all green 
with crab-grass and the corn turning yellow. 

The crop would certainly have been a failure had he trusted 
to the common, careless, slovenly tillage so often seen in such 
cases. Of course, laborious attention with hand and hoe and 
fluke day "after day would have saved it, but this would probably 
have cost more than the crop was worth. 

I cannot leave this interesting experiment without a further 
examination. 

Will corn do as well without any working, if the grass and 
weeds are kept down, as it will by frequent tillage with the fluke ? 
If we can prove this to be an established fact, then the very 
best way to raise corn is to use a heavy mulch of something that 
will effectually prevent the growth of weeds and grass and at 
the same time manure the ground. 

I will here relate an authentic case where a crop was raised 
without the use of plough or fluke after the corn was planted : 

"George W. Williams ,of Bourbon county, Kentucky, has 
this year grown on one acre and one-eighth of land one hundred 
and seventy-eight bushels, or at the rate of one hundred and 
jifty-eight bushels to the acre! The corn was an early yellow 
corn, and was planted in rows two feet apart and one foot apart 
in the rows. 

"The corn was dropped in a furrow, covered with hoes, the 
surface levelled and rolled after planting. The surface between 
the rows was scraped over with sharp hoes to cut the weeds, 
which was all the labor the crop received. The soil was good, 
ploughed deep in the spring, and before planting a thin coat of 



GREEN MANURES FOR INDIAN CORN 133 

fresh stable manure was spread over the surface, cross-ploughed, 
and harrowed. 

"Mr. WiUiams attributes much of his success to not disturb- 
ing the roots of the corn during cultivation." — Cultivator, 1841. 

Now, to return to our field of five acres in clover in a state of 
decay. How shall we decide the matter ? Which way will pro- 
duce the most corn at the least cost of time and labor? Shall 
we plough in the heavy dressing and work the crop as usual, 
or shall we put it in with the hoe and leave the mulch undisturb- 
ed? 

The only certain way to decide this question is by careful 
and repeated trials of both methods, year after year, by a number 
of farmers and on different kinds of soil. If the crops should be 
equal, we should declare at once in favor of the mulching pro- 
cess. The soil would lose nothing by evaporation. One rain 
in May would ensure the crop against all drought. 

The labor would be reduced to one-third or one-quarter. 
The ground would remain in a state of improvement during the 
fall and winter. And if the mulch was not thick enough to bring 
another crop of corn, it could be ploughed in for barley or oats 
or a second corn crop. By adopting this plan the whole field will 
be in clover, either growing or decaying, and in both cases im- 
proving the land. 

I presume, after all that has been said in favor of the new 
method of raising corn without tillage, or of the other method of 
concentration of all the manurial power upon a little land, very 
few will be willing to adopt either plan. They will still cling to 
the old practice of putting the whole field in corn, whether the 
land is rich or poor. Very well, let them do it; necessity will 
teach them a better way. 

Why not let the field rest in clover three or four years, and 
then plough in by this means a heavy dressing of manure ? 

This plan will be equal, of course, to concentrating the 
growth of one year on to one-third or one-fourth of the field. 

Either method will ensure a large crop and pay well for the 
tillage. 



134 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Remember, when a field is improved with green clover or 
other green manures the benefit will be seen for several years; 
this proves that the greatest expense in raising corn is the labor. 

Let me prove this by an extract from Joseph Harris. In his 
last and best work, Talks on Manures, he gives the cost per acre 
of raising corn, as follows: 

Preparing the land for the crop $5 .00 

Planting and seed 1 . 50 

Cultivating three times, twice in a row — 

Both ways 5 .00 

Hoeing twice 3 .00 

Cutting up the corn 1 . 50 

Husking and drawing in the corn 4 . 00 



$20.00 



Thirteen dollars per acre of this labor may be saved by the 
new method. But let that pass now; we wish to say something 
about the harassing and wearing labor of ploughing. 

Let us turn to England, and there we can see what an im- 
mense waste of horse-power there is in the present mode of farm- 
ing. . 

Mechi says: "In one place a pair of horses abreast will 
plough one acre per day; in another, four, five, and six horses in a 
line will only plough three-quarters of an acre. 

"In Essex we plough once for wheat; in some other counties 
three or four times (in some places nine ploughings for turnips; 
in another only two). Here we allow seven shillings per acre for 
ploughing, while elsewhere thirteen shillings is a common price." 
Until farmers adopt an entirely different mode of tillage the 
horses required to do all the work will consume one-fourth of all 
they raise on the farm. 

There is no amendment to the old method that will do, but a 
radical change in the whole system of agriculture. 



GREEN MANURES FOR INDIAN CORN 135 

There should be for every crop, as far as possible, a concen- 
tration of plant-food to such a degree as to do away with one-half 
or two-thirds, or even three-fourths, of all the ploughing. Then 
the business will be much more profitable, much more certain. 

It is the too frequent breaking up of poor land that keeps the 
farmer poor. And it is the sole dependence upon a scanty 
supply of poor strawey manure that keeps the land for ever in a 
poor condition. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES. 

' I ^HE reader will please remember that one heavy crop of 
potatoes exhausts the land as much as three large crops of 
wheat. Hence he must expect his farm to suffer if compelled to 
produce potatoes every year. To provide for this great ex- 
penditure of plant-food you must either make or buy an abund- 
ance of stable manure or plough in green crops. 

If you cannot obtain good rich manure for one dollar and 
fifty cents per ton within two or three miles of your farm, you had 
better conclude to depend on clover ploughed in or used as a 
mulch. Another fact must not be forgotten. Potatoes will 
flourish better and be more mealy, more palatable, and more 
salable raised on sandy loam than on clayey ground. Hence it 
will be to your interest to select the most mellow and friable soil 
on the farm for this crop. 

Begin the year before to prepare the lot for potatoes. Take 
a field that is well set with clover and top dress it. 

If the soil is rich and you have a reasonable expectation that 
by the next year the whole field will bring three or four hundred 
bushels of potatoes per acre, then you can prepare the land in 
the following way: As soon as the clover comes in blossom mow 
it down. This will check every weed that might be concealed 
among it. The second crop of clover will spring up and grow 
rapidly, and when in full bloom must be cut down like the first. 
Now, if August and September should be wet and warm a third 
crop will grow so rank that you had better mow it down when in 
full blossom. If you neglect this advice you may be troubled 
with weeds among the potatoes, and you will regret that you 
had not cut their heads off in their early growth. 

Do not let any person persuade you to plough up this field in 
the fall. And when spring returns, and about a week or more 



GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES 137 

before you begin to plough in the seed-potatoes, sow on top of 
the half-rotted clover any commercial fertilizer that it is desired 
to apply. If you have plenty of seed, plant whole potatoes not 
less in size than a hen's egg. If you have not seed enough, cut 
the large tubers into two or three or four pieces, and drop them 
in every third furrow. 

Do you think all this is too much expense and trouble? 
Have you forgotten that there is not a crop which you can raise 
which will pay as well as potatoes for all the labor and fertilizers 
bestowed upon it.'' 

The above plan may be regarded as the usual way of putting 
in potatoes with clover, instead of using stable manure. Some 
farmers prefer to let the clover grow six or ten inches high 
before ploughing in the seed. 

If you wish to adopt this mode you had better plough the 
field before planting, and then run out the furrows to receive the 
seed. I have known the tender germs to be very much injured 
by turning a crop of green clover in the spring directly on them. 
The potato-sprouts appeared to be killed by the rich juice of the 
clover-stalks. 

On our farm at home I have seen, when a boy, 424 bushels of 
potatoes per acre produced by ploughing in clover and dropping 
the seed in every third furrow. But there were raised on a lot 
that was so much the pet of the family that every crop which grew 
upon it was carefully measured. When in wheat it yielded 
forty-nine bushles per acre, and the crop of corn eighty-eight 
bushels to the acre. And when in clover well do I remember 
my father measuring stalk after stalk that ran five feet six inches 
in height. Now, my good reader, if your farm and mine would 
always produce such crops as these on every field, we might re- 
gard the question as settled as to what plan we should follow to 
insure success. 

Nothing else would be required but to plough in clover over 
the whole field, and be well rewarded for all our labor. 

But what shall we do when we know that the farm is only in a 
poor condition ? 



138 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

We wish to raise per acre as large a crop as was ever produced. 
It is the cheapest, the best, the most profitable, and indeed the 
only sure way to make money by farming. But how shall 
we do it? By the concentration of plant-food. There is no 
other way. 

Let us now prepare to raise an immense crop of potatoes. 

There is a field of twenty acres well set with clover. With a 
good machine mow it all down when in blossom. Now rake it 
all on to five acres, making one land through the middle of the 
field. About the first of August the remaining fifteen acres will 
again be in bloom, and must be cut and moved with the rake on 
to the first crop. If a third crop should grow large enough to add 
considerable to the mulch, then mow it down when ready and 
spread it on the five acres. 

You see the whole object of this labor is to concentrate all 
the green manure of a large field on to one-fourth of the ground. 
Probably the best way to do this would be to rake the first crop 
into large and close windrows on the middle of the land, and the 
second crop into windrows alongside of the first, an 
third up in the same way. This would require no spreading of 
one cutting on top of the other. 

This plan leaves three-fourths of the field in clover, and yet 
it is very likely we can raise as many potatoes on the five acres 
thus prepared as on the twenty acres under tillage in the ordinary 
way. 

Great credit must be given to the admirable preparation of 
the soil under the mulch, remaining undisturbed in a 
moist, mouldering and enriching condition from September to 
April. 

And what a difference in the cost and labor! As it requires 
about ten bushels of potatoes to plant an acre, we will save 150 
bushels of seed by confining our operations to the five acres, and 
also the ploughing, harrowing, planting fluking, and hoeing of 
fifteen acres of drier, harder, poorer soil. Is not this something ? 
Is not labor the hole in the bag tlu-ough which almost daily 
dribbles out one-half the farmer's profits ? The balance of the 



GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES 139 

field, being left in clover, is in a state or gradual improvement. 
And how much better its condition than ground left bare and 
exposed all winter after a crop has been taken from it! 

Has not experience taught the intelligent farmer to concen- 
trate his stable manure to such a degree that he finds it most 
profitable to "use the unsold produce of ten acres to manure 
one?" Such is the acknowledgment of Joseph Harris, and 
doubtless of many others. As this is a grand truth respecting 
the residue of our crops, it must be the case with green manures. 

Then every hour of labor will receive its full reward. But 
is it so when the manure and labor are spread over a large field ? 
No, unless the field is very rich or the amount of plantfood almost 
unlimited. 

When stable or green manure is concentrated till it forms a 
close and dense shelter to the ground, do we not place the soil in 
the very condition that the nitre-beds are in, where thousands 
of pounds of saltpetre are made by artificial means ? And 
does not this fact shed an abundant light on, if not a full and satis- 
factory explanation of, the remarkable benefit derived from 
covering the land, as related by Johnson and Anderson in the 
second chapter of this book .'' 

And mark the result of this wise concentration. Year after 
year you will be astonished at the great crops produced on land 
once carefully and deeply mulched by green manures or by any 
other means. 

I have seen five tons per acre of clover and timothy hay 
taken from ground which had been heavily mulched for potatoes 
six years before. 

To raise profitable crops of any kind, and particularly of 
potatoes, the greatest want of the farmer is manure. 

If you have plenty of straw to spare, I would advise you to 
use it with clover to mulch potatoes in the following manner: 
Cover the patch as above directed with the three crops of clover 
cut from the whole field. Let it remain all winter to mellow and 
protect the ground. In the spring, when it is time to plant, you 
must rake off all the mulch and then harrow or fluke the surface, 



140 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

if it is not already loose and mellow enough to receive the seed. 
Then drop the seed, about one piece to every square foot. Then 
cover, not with dirt, but with the half-rotten clover. Now, if the 
covering is not ten or twelve inches thick, so as to prevent all 
grass and weeds from growing, you must put on straw enough to 
make the mulch about one foot deep. 

I consider this a better and cheaper way than to use stable 
manure and straw. Here, you see all the labor required is done 
at once — no weeding, no working, and nothing to do to the pota- 
toes till they are ready to be taken up in the fall. To take them 
up, all you have to do is to turn the mulch over with a fork, and 
there are the potatoes all clean and ready to pick up without any 
digging. 

With regard to raising potatoes under straw, great care is 
required not to disturb the roots during the last month or two 
of their growth. Hence the reason that you cannot raise pota- 
toes under straw since the potato bugs have made their appear- 
ance. 

The necessity of walking over the vines day after day to pick 
off the bugs, and to sow Paris green in plaster on every leaf, 
will almost ruin the crop of potatoes. 

In 1863, before the potato bugs came, I raised over nine 
hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre under straw about fifteen 
inches deep. But I cannot do it any longer. In 1893 I tried it. 
The trampling incident to the battle with the bugs almost des- 
troyed the crop. 

I cannot leave this subject without one more word of advice. 
Never use cornstalks to mulch potatoes, they are so troublesome 
to remove when taking up the crop. 

I once had a lot of sown corn — about thirty-five or forty tons 
to the acre — cut down with a mowing-machine, and then doubled 
over and left till spring for a mulch for potatoes. 

It was entirely too heavy to handle; we never tried it again. 

There is a much better way to use green corn to raise pota- 
toes. Sow the corn about twenty grains to the foot, in furrows 
three and a half feet apart. Work it two or three times, and 



GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES 141 

when in full maturity run a deep furrow between the rows of 
corn, and then cut the crop with a machine. Now, when the 
hands on the farm have one or more idle hours set them to work 
filling the furrows with the mown corn. And when this opera- 
tion is completed let them during the fall and winter haul out 
old hay, straw, yard-scrapings, waste ashes, hen and stable 
manure, and when the hogs are killed the hair and blood, and 
indeed anything and everything that contains plant-food, and 
spread it along the furrows on top of the cornstalks. Many an 
hour when nothing else can be done may be devoted to this profit- 
able work. 

When it is time to plant the seed potatoes in the spring all is 
ready to receive them. You have only to press the seed down 
among the manure, and then turn a furrow from each side on to 
every row. The milddles may be fluked or ploughed, according 
to your judgment and experience. 

In 1865 I raised a grand and heavy crop of Jackson Whites 
in this way. I bought the seed in Philadelphia (twelve barrels) 
on purpuse for this lot. 

The number of bushels per acre was not ascertained, because 
I had no idea then of ever publishing the result. 

This little field has not yet forgotten the good treatment it 
received at that time. It is a grand truth that land which has 
been made rich by mulching or by any other means has a re- 
markable power of remaining good for many years. 

Let me relate an interesting example of this fact from Mechi. 

He says: "Walking before harvest with a friend in his wheat- 
field, I was struck with the marked superiority of one corner, and 
asked for an explanation. 

" 'Oh', he said, 'this portion was once a cottage-garden.' 

" 'How long aero?' 

" 'Why,' said he, 'I have known the field fifty years, and it 
was ten years before that time.' " 

With such a lesson as this before us, we should not be afraid of 
losing our golden treasures by piling on manure, particularly for 
corn or potatoes. Here we have undeniable proof that land 



142 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

when well improved will hold its own for sixty years, and still 
show a "marked superiority." And is it not very probable that 
that corner got but little plant-food when the field was manured 
every four or five years for a crop of grain ? Would not the farm- 
er be likely to say, "Ah, you are rich enough; you got your 
dressing when a garden ?" 

I once had a singular experience on my Farm of the 
effects of mulching. 

I wished to bring a field of ten acres into clover as soon as 
possible. I had oats and clover seed sown together in the spring, 
but was determined to have the oats cut when in blossom, to 
give light and air and perfect freedom to the clover. I con- 
cluded to raise late potatoes by using the green oats as a mulch. 
Not living on the farm, I was under the necessity of depending 
upon others to do all things right and at the proper time. 

The oats grew finely, and when the grain was in the milky 
stage two broad lands were ploughed and planted with potatoes, 
and then the oats were cut and spread nearly a foot thick on the 
fresh ground. 

On my next visit I was astonished to see how careless, how 
thoughtless, the foreman had been to let the oats get so far ahead 
before he cut them. It turned out just as I expected. The 
green stalks had strength and vitality enough in them to mature 
and ripen all the seed. 

Then followed the most remarkable circumstance in the 
whole experiment. 

It appeared that every grain of oats began to grow, and I 
am certain there were millions of seed that sent down their long 
roots to the ground, notwithstanding they rested near the top 
of the mulch and nearly a foot above the soil ! The potatoes of 
course were smothered out after a feeble growth. In September 
I directed the lands to be ploughed up. A few days after I 
received a letter from the foreman, requesting me to send out an 
engine of ten or twenty horsepower if I wanted those lands 
ploughed. 



GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES 143 

I went out, and there was the plough sticking in the mulch, 
and not one yard could a pair of good horses move it. 

The oats, new and old, were woven together, consolidated, 
compact, and so tightly bound to the soil that two years passed 
before we could do anything with it. 

It is now nine years rince that happened, and we have had 
the field in wheat and corn and in potatoes, and those two lands 
are so rich that the wheat lodges, although we are careful to salt 
the ground, and the corn proves by its big ears and thick stalks 
that the soil is twice or three times as good as any other part of 
the field. 

It shows the great necessity of doing everything exactly at the 
right time. Had the foreman cut the oats just as it was coming 
into blossom, we doubtless would have had a splendid crop of 
potatoes, and still left the lands in a good condition. I record 
this failure as a warning to others. 

Do we not repeat this experiment every year by cutting grass 
or hay when the weeds among it are ripe enough to re-seed the 
field when we spread the manure made from the weedy hay ? 

I am a firm believer in mulching with green clover, particu- 
larly for the purpose of raising immense crops of potatoes. I 
know that one thousand bushels per acre can be raised in that 
way easier than by any other method. I will relate a case which 
I know to be a fact: An acquaintance of mine, a gentleman es- 
teemed for his integrity and relaibility, was sitting one evening 
in a shoemaker's shop in New Jersey listening to the conversation 
of two farmers. One said that he believed that one thousand 
bushels of potatoes could be raised upon an acre. The other 
offered to pay all the expense and give him a handsome pre- 
mium if he would accomplish the task. 

The offer was at once accepted, provided there were no 
limitations enjoined as to time and means. 

As soon as the acre was carefully measured off many loads of 
rich manure were spread upon the surface and ploughed in. In 
about two weeks the seeds of weeds and grass began to sprout up 
very thick; then the ground was again covered with manure, and 



144 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

again ploughed as before. This process was continued for two 
years; that is, repeated manuring and repeated ploughing 
till the soil was as rich almost as a barnyard in midwinter and as 
mellow as a feather-bed. 

Then the potatoes were planted by ploughing in the seed in 
every furrow. Nothing more was required. When the crop 
was taken up it measured eleven hundred bushels of good pot- 
toes from that one acre! 

My informant could not tell me how many loads of manure 
were put on; he seemed only to feel a deep interest in the results, 
and was careful to be present at the final measurement and 
decision. 

I do not think that such a crop could always be obtained in 
that way. 

The season must have been remarkably favorable in the 
amount of rain and heat and sunshine. Had the weather been 
very dry there might have been a partial failure. In all such 
trials the ground should be heavily mulched on top with clover 
or straw. Then there could be no such word as fail. 

Do you regard this experiment as too extravagant ever to be 
repeated .? Is there any great loss of manure? 

What the crop could not assimilate remained in comparative 
safety. It was nearly all there, ready to produce great and 
grand harvests in future years. 

The loss of plant-food by evaporation or by leaching would 
not be so great on that one acre as it would on six or eight acres 
had he spread the manure over that much ground. Besides this, 
he could spread clover or straw over this one acre without much 
labor or expense, and thus secure it in a great measure from 
future waste. No good reason can be given why he should not 
continue to raise potatoes on this highly-manured acre. 

Boussingault says: "Potatoes may come again and again 
upon the same soil; they are incessantly cultivated at Santa Fe 
and Quito, and nowhere are they of better quality." — Rural 
Economy. 



GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES 145 

Again he says, in another place: "That there is no absolute 
necessity for alternation of crops where dung and labor can be 
readily procured is undeniable." 

The reader will please remember that Henderson considers 
garden vegetables an exception to this rule. Experience has 
taught him that vegetables do better by alteration every few years, 
and in some cases every year. 

The concentration of plant-food in general farm-tillage, which 
we have so earnestly commended, and, I feel, almost to a tire- 
some repetition of the subject, reminds me of a little instructive 
advice communicated to a young beginner. 

Not many miles from his home lived an old man remarkable 
for the wisdom and knowledge which he had treasured up as a 
very successful agriculturist and a very money-making farmer. 
The youth asked him if he would please to reveal to him the 
choicest and most valuable secrets and gems of knowledge res- 
specting their profession, as he was about to retire from it. 

"Yes, I will cheerfully do it," said the old man with a kind 
expression. "Go home and make five acres of your farm as 
rich as a garden, and then come to me and I will tell you what 
to do next." 

"Well, but suppose I cannot do that.?" 

"Then," replied the old man, "make one acre as rich as a 
garden." 

Now, we never heard what else he intended to reveal to him, 
but we can easily conjecture that he would say, when informed 
that he had complied with his advice, 

"Go and make another acre as rich as the first, and thus 
continue till the whole farm is as rich as a garden." 

How many persons get discouraged because they fail to en- 
rich a large field all at once and all the same year! 

In conclusion, let me counsel you to follow the advice of the 
venerable farmer and you will never regret it. And to do this 
with profit and pleasure place your trust in green manures. 
And if not rank enough to bring a heavy crop over the whole 
field, then double it once or twice, or even three times, and "great 
will be your reward." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

GREEN MANURES FOR THE MARKET-GARDEN. 

npHOSE who engage in raising vegetables for the market very 
soon discover that they can not make the business profitable 
unless they manure very heavily every year. They must put on 
from seventy-five to one hundred tons per acre every spring of 
good stable manure, or something else that contains about the 
same amount of plant-food. Now, it will be too expensive to 
haul manure several miles for this purpose, because every 
hundred tons contains about seventy-five tons of water. There- 
fore, you must depend on bone-meal or super-phosphate of lime, 
or on guano, or on green crops for your market-garden. This 
being the case, you will soon discover that green clover and rye 
are the cheapest and must reliable substitutes for stable manure 
or any foreign fertilizer. 

Regarding this as a truth, it settles the question as to the 
amount of land required for a profitable business. 

Ten acres are enough for all those who live near a city and 
can depend on it for all the manure they need, while all who 
live at a distance should have thirty or fifty, or even one hundred 
acres, according to the amount of business they wish to do. 

Before we say anything about the preparation of the soil by 
the use of green crops, let me relate to you an example of a 
very profitable concentration of manure and labor on a little 
market-garden. 

A man in New Jersey, within sight of the city of New York, 
in the spring of 1864 on one acre "planted 12,000 early Wake- 
field cabbages, which by the first week in July were sold in New 
York market, at eight dollars per hundred, for $960. Between 
the rows of cabbages were planted at the same time 18,000 
Silesia lettuce-plants, which, at one dollar and fifty cents per 100, 



GREEN MANURES FOR THE MARKET GARDEN 147 

brought $270. Both crops were cleared off by July 15, the 
ground being thoroughly ploughed, harrowed, and planted with 
40,000 celery-plants, which sold before Christmas of the same 
year at three dollars per 100, or $1200 — making the total receipts 
$2430. His expenses were: Manure, $150; keep of horse, $300; 
hired labor, $400; incidental outlay, $100," besides the interest 
on his investment. 

Now, was it a misfortune that this man actually owned but 
one acre of land ? What would have been his procedure had he 
purchased six acres and had only money enough left to buy $150* 
worth of manure ? Is it not very probable he would have spread 
this amount over the whole six acres ? The temptation to do sO' 
would have been very strong. 

Nothing but an intimate knowledge of the business could 
have prevented it. 

And what would have been the result on six acres? Not 
more than one or two hundred dollars per acre would have re- 
turned to him, and but little would have been left after paying all 
expenses. We know that this would happen. We have seen it 
again and again with truckers who were not masters of the 
great secret of concentration. 

The market-gardener must learn wisdom from the failures 
as well as from the remarkable successes of others. 

Let us now commence our operations without stable manure 
on a rich field of twenty acres well set with clover. 

With a good machine we must cut this without delay, and 
rake it on the five acres selected and measured off for the truck- 
patch. The remaining fifteen acres will have a second crop of 
not less than ten tons per acre, and will be in bloom about the 
1st of August, and must be mown and raked on top of the first 
cutting. 

Cut this third crop before the blossoms begin to fade, and 
rake it on to the other crops. These three dressings of clover 
will make altogether 525 tons of green manure concentrated on 
the five acres. Now, what will it cost to enrich the garden in 
this way ? 



148 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

We have the pubHshed declaration of practical farmers that 
they can mow clover and make it into hay and put it in the barn 
for one dollar and a half per acre. 

If this can be done, then it will cost no more to cut the clover, 
and rake it and spread it on the plot in the centre of the field. 
Cutting the twenty acres once will be thirty dollars, the fifteen 
acres mown twice will be forty-five dollars, and one year's in- 
terest on the field, worth $100 per acre, will be $120, or altogether 
$195. 

Here we have the market-garden of five acres, manured with 
525 tons of green clover at a cost of $195, and all ready for seed- 
ing and planting in the spring. Now let us compare this rich 
deposit of plant-food with stable manure purchased in the city. 

Peter Henderson, author of Gardening for Profit, in a letter 
to Joseph Harris says: "In a general way it might be safe to ad- 
vise that whenever a ton of either cow, horse, hog or other 
stable manure can be laid on the ground for three dollars, it is 
cheaper than commercial fertilizers of any kind at their usual 
market rates. This three dollars per ton, I think, would be 
about the average cost in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia. 

"We never haul it on the ground until we are ready to plough 
it in." 

This is exactly the information we need for a fair and honest 
comparison between the two systems. We have the cost of the 
manure and all the labor of hauling and spreading given in one 
figure. Now, we only want to know how much is required. 

You will find that question settled in Henderson's work. He 
says not less than seventy-five to one hundred tons per acre will 
answer for a market-garden, and this amount must be applied 
every year. 

Taking the lowest quantity,the seventy-five tons will cost $225 
and of course the manure for the whole five acres the sum of 
$1125. 

Now, subtract the cost of our 525 tons of clover from this, 
and we have a balance of $930 in favor of the green manure. In 



GREEN MANURES FOR THE MARKET GARDEN 149 

other words, it will cost nearly six times as much for the stable- 
cleanings as for the green crop. Another matter of deep interest 
is involved in this comparison — the intrinsic value of the two in 
their capacity to furnish available plant-food. 

Three hundred and seventy-five tons of stable manure 
contain 3750 pounds of nitrogen, 1875 pounds of phosphoric 
acid, and 4687J pounds of potash. Now, the 525 tons of green 
clover contain 6300 pounds of nitrogen, 1312| pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, and 4725 pounds of potash. 

In the most costly element you see that 525 tons of clover 
has nearly twice the amount of it found in the 375 tons of manure. 

There is but one more question to be settled in this examina- 
tion. Is the nitrogen more available in stable manure than in 
the green clover? No; it certainly is not. I base this declara- 
tion on the careful experiments of Lawes and Gilbert. 

Whether it would be better to plough the mulch under in the 
spring before planting and seeding, or only disturb the friable 
and crumbling mould enough to receive the seed and young 
plants from the hot-beds, must be a matter of experience or know- 
ledge gleaned from such works as Henderson's Gardening for 
Profit, 

Besides clover for the market-garden you will find green rye 
of great value for all kinds of vegetables which can be sown or 
transplanted as late at the 10th or 15th of May. See the four- 
teenth chapter, Rye as Green Manure, for very strong testimony 
upon this subject. 

You may plough in a heavy crop of clover in August or Sept- 
tember and sow three bushels of rye per acre, and have fifteen 
tons per acre of good green manure to turn in by the middle of 
May. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

GREEN MANURES FOR THE ORCHARD. 

FRUIT trees of all kinds should be planted in a rich field well 
set with clover. In June, or whenever the crop is in 
blossom, you should cut the clover and rake it up and mulch 
every tree. This covering should be about one foot deep, and 
should extend not less than six feet from the body of the tree 
in a circle all around it. This mulch will last three or four years. 
But you must not forget every fall to open a space around each 
tree about twelve inches wide, to keep the field-mice from cutting 
the bark. And if the rabbits are plenty on your farm you must 
protect the bodies of all young trees by wrapping something 
loosely around them, extending from fifteen to eighteen inches 
from the ground. 

Old bark from other trees, such as the oak and chestnut, will 
answer the purpose. In fact, anything will do that will protect 
the tree. 

Where stones are plenty they may be so carefully piled around 
the trunk as to form a protection for years against every bark- 
destroying animal. 

I had a fine young orchard nearly killed by rabbits eating the 
bark off near the ground and nearly girdling every tree. This 
was done before I was aware of the danger. I could scarcely 
believe that so much injury had been accomplished by a few 
rabbits till I gave permission to two hunters to shoot them; but 
when they killed thirty-five in one day I saw at once that my 
Farm was still entitled to its early reputation as being a 
place very attractive to gunners, and that all my fruit trees were 
in danger. 

The first crop of clover, you recollect, is all devoted to mulch- 
ing the orchard. Every year after this you must cut down the 



GREEN MANURES FOR THE ORCHARD 151 

green clover twice or three times and leave it spread on the 
ground to protect and improve the soil. 

The apple, pear, peach, quince, plum, apricot, cherry, grape, 
strawberry, gooseberry, currant, raspberry, blackberry, and in- 
deed all things that grow out of the ground, are greatly benefited 
by a thick mulch, particularly of clover. Besides this, some 
trees require a careful examination about their roots to destroy 
all worms that infest them. The peach above all others needs 
this inspection. 

If the clover does not re-seed the ground, and thus keep the 
orchard well set with it, you should sow half a peck or more per 
acre whever it appears to need it. Do not suppose the seed will 
not grow. 

William West of Upper Darby on his fine grazing farm 
"found it necessary to sow clover thinly on the green grass sod 
every three or four years to correct a slight tendency which 
green grass has to bind the soil." If clover-seed will grow on 
such a sod, there is almost a positive certainty that it will grow 
beneath a mulch on a field of clover. If it will not, there is 
either a want of nourishment or the surface of the ground is 
too loose for the seed. Commercial fertilizer and lime will 
correct the first, a heavy roller properly used will remedy the 
second. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ON DIVIDING THE FARM INTO FIELDS. 

TT would be doing great injustice to the admirable system of 

farming with green manures to make no comparison as a 
matter of economy between it and the common mode of tillage. 

When you plough in green crops you enrich the land without 
the necessity of making manure by grazing and feeding animals. 
Hence you save the great expense of erecting new fences every 
few years and the annual repair of old ones. What few horses 
and cows you are obliged to keep may run on lands that are 
never ploughed, or be kept in small enclosures by a judicious 
system of soiling. Few persons are aware of the cost of keeping 
a large farm well fenced into seven or eight fields until they have 
tried it for a number of years. To give you an idea of the im- 
mense outlay required for this kind of farming, I will quote two 
reliable authorities. 

In the "Year Book of Agriculture" Wells says: "The amount 
of capital employed in the construction and repair of fences in 
the United States would be deemed fabulous were not the esti- 
mates founded on statistical facts which admit of no dispute." 

Burknap, a well-known agricultural writer, says: "Strange 
as it may seem, the greatest investment in this country, the most 
costly productions of human industry, are the common fences 
which divide the fields from the highways and separate them 
from each other. 

Here is a revelation so startling, and yet so true, that it should 
set every thinking man to a close, careful, and calculating investi- 
gation before erecting another panel of inside fence. 

And when he sees all these structures which divide his farm 
into fields going down to dust by a decay which no human agency 
can prevent, he will rejoice to learn that he can save nine-tenths 



ON DIVIDING THE FARM INTO FIELDS 153 

of all this expense by adopting and combining together the green 
manure and the soiling system. 

When I bought my Farm I found it divided into 
eight enclosures. But, strange to say, not a field had a name by 
which you could write or speak of it. I at once gave every lot a 
characteristic name. I give them here, to show you how easy it 
will be to know and remember them: 

Littlefield is the smallest enclosure; Brookfleld has a little 
stream of water running through it; Clearfield has no obstruc- 
tions in it; Woodsfield has a woods in it; Gidlyfield unfortu- 
nately has two gullies in it; Springfield has a cool spring of water 
in it; Rockfield has many rocks in it; and Meadowfield is a per- 
manent meadow, which has a large run of bright water flowing 
through it from west to east, which divides the farm into two 
nearly equal portions. With this arrangement it is very con- 
venient to charge every field with all we put on it, and to give 
credit for all we take off it. 

My system of farming does not require the inside fences to be 
kept in repair, but we let the old landmarks remain. There is an 
advantage in having the farm laid out in fields, even when there 
is no necessity of erecting fences on the dividing-lines. The 
crops themselves are generally sufficient to show the boundary 
of each lot. Besides this, every field should be carefully measur- 
ed and the number of acres noted down, so that you can tell 
without guessing what quantity of seed you may have to buy or 
how many tons of lime or fertilizers will be required for any par- 
ticular field. 

I remember seeing a statement that the Hon. Josiah Quincy 
on his large farm tore out seven miles of inside fences when they 
were getting too old to be of any value, and instead of erecting 
new ones adopted the more economical method of soiling all 
his cattle. By this plan he found that he could keep as many 
animals on twenty as he formerly could keep on sixty acres in 
pasture. 

We are glad to find that the experience of many others coin- 
cides with his views. 



154 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES 

Colman in his European Agriculture says: "That a great 
saving of food is effected by soiUng there can be no doubt; no 
one rates it at less than two to one; many say that three animals, 
some assert with confidence that four animals, can be well kept 
upon the produce of land, if soiled, where not more than one 
could be kept if depastured." 

Now, it is a common remark that if you make your land so 
rich that one acre will bring as much grain or grass as two acres 
would, but a few years before, you really double the size of your 
farm. This may seem like a paradoxical expression, yet if you 
double the productive capacity of your land it is certainly much 
better than to purchase a poor farm alongside of it. The man 
who owns one hundred acres of good tillable land which he has 
always devoted to grazing may well say that he is now running a 
three-hundred-acre farm if by soiling he is fattening as many 
cattle on his one hundred as others are doing on their three 
hundred acres. And this is fact, not fiction. 

I think I hear the reader say, "Will you please to tell us 
something about the expense of cutting grass and other things 
and feeding the animals ?" 

In advocating the new system of soiling to save the expense of 
fencing, and to leave many broad acres flourishing in rich crops 
for green manures, we ask a complete modification of the old- 
fashioned way of stall-feeding. You know well that more than 
half the manure of animals is in a liquid condition, and cannot be 
saved in the stable or in the yard without great expense and 
trouble. 

What, then, shall we do.? We must combine the folding 
with the soiling method. We must put up a temporary fence, 
enclosing a half or one or two acres, and feed all the horses and 
cattle in this pen, and thus save all the liquid and solid excre- 
ments where they can be used without the labor of removing 
them. 

We need not make any estimate of the amount of green corn 
or clover which will grow on this lot the next year. It will be so 
rank you will never get tired looking at it. 



ON DIVIDING THE FARM INTO FIELDS 155 

But how shall we shelter the animals form the hot suns of 
July and August? 

That will be much easier than you suppose. A few crotches 
firmly planted in the ground and covered with corn-fodder or 
straw will make comfortable shade for them, beneath which 
the air will move in a gentle breeze. 

This plan will be far more healthy than shutting the cattle 
up in the stable. 

I always tell my patients to live and sleep as much as possible 
on the heal ti est side of the house, and that is the outside. The 
same device is applicable to all creatures. 

As this chapter has been devoted mainly to pointing out the 
difference between soiling and grazing, I cannot conclude without 
calling your attention to the appearance of the country in July 
1880. For many miles around the city of Wilmington, Del. 
the pasture-fields were brown and bare and apparently destitute 
of verdure. The grass was nearly dead. The hungry animals 
wandered over the fields, and in many places found nothing but 
weeds to eat. It was more than two months since a deep wetting 
rain had fallen. 

What better opportunity could occur to compare the merits 
of the two systems of feeding cattle! The sown corn was green, 
fresh, and vigorous; the drought had not withered it. The 
quantity was lessened, yet so little had it suffered from the dry 
weather it was still in a growing condition and was cut daily 
and fed to the stock on the farm. What a contrast between 
it and the dead grass of the fields! 

Every farmer should put in one or more acres of sown corn, 
for green feed that he may be independent of all drought. By 
folding and soiling together we accomplish a great desideratum, 
the concentration and conservation of plant food upon the soil, 
this is a fundamental requirement of successful farming. 



THE END. 



FEB 2 1912 



/IDercantile ipdnting Company 

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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